Brothers wrongly arrested for gangrape: ‘Cops striped us naked and beat us, I said will die but not confess’

On May 27, The Indian Express had reported how the personal intervention by Mumbai Joint Commissioner of Police (Law & Order) Vishwas Nangre-Patil had led to the release of brothers Anil Chauhan (19) and Nilesh Chauhan (20) – booked by the Dharavi police on May 11 – for the gangrape of a 20-year-old woman. The woman had alleged that two persons had gangraped her at her residence between 4.30 pm to 5 pm on May 10. One of them had also shot a video of the incident.

While Anil works in a salon, Nilesh repairs printer cartridges. They stay in a chawl in Vile Parle with their parents. On May 10, when the gangrape took place, the two had come to Dharavi from Vile Parle to attend their cousin’s wedding. On May 15 afternoon, they, along with their father Jugdev, were bundled in a police van by policemen dressed in plain clothes and brought to Dharavi police station without being informed why they have been detained.

At the police station, Anil was taken to a room and assaulted with belts. Nilesh said he stood outside, horrified, listening to his brother’s cries. “I heard the policemen hurling abuse and beating him up… I started crying listening to his screams.”

Anil said, “The police showed me a CCTV camera clip and shouted at me. I got scared and was unable to recollect what I was doing there. They then started beating me up… I confessed to the crime to avoid more assault. I said ‘I raped her and my brother shot a video’.”

Nilesh added, “They said ‘Anil has confessed, now you speak the truth’… The policemen stripped us naked and put some kind of oil on our head, body and private parts… we suffered burning sensations and dizziness. They slapped me multiple times and my left ear went numb. They said they will castrate my brother.”

“I told them ‘I will die but not confess’. As they kept beating me with belts, I chanted the names of my parents and God. Next day, we were taken to Bandra court and I was prepared to say ‘I was falsely implicated and assaulted’ but no one asked us anything. I have six elder sisters, I cannot even think of hurting a woman.”

As the father ran pillar to post to get them out of hail, Kiran Mhase, a Dharavi resident, who is also a social worker and a family friend, offered help.

Kiran said, “The police took all the DVRs of the CCTV cameras in our area. I managed to get CCTV footage of the entry and exit points of the lane where the victim stays. It showed that the two brothers entered the lane at 5.49 pm and exited at 5.53 pm.”

“I requested local corporator Vasant Nakase to come with me to the police station on May 16. But the Dharavi police did not help. An officer said they will soon file a chargesheet and the boys will get bail. That’s all he can do. Then we decided to go to the DCP, but someone showed me a video byte that he had given to the media on the case. So, we decided to approach Vishwas Nangre-Patil on May 18.”

“I went to his office with several women from the community. He said if the two are innocent, he will ensure that they are not punished. The next day, he reached the Dharavi police station… only because of him the two are now out on bail,” Kiran added.

After Patil’s intervention, the Dharavi police submitted a report in the court saying it does not have sufficient evidence against the brothers, paying the way for their bail.

“Based on just two seconds of CCTV footage, a sub-inspector and the anti-criminal squad traced the accused in Vile Parle,” read a press note issued by the police after the arrests.

When contacted, a senior police officer from Dharavi police station, said, “We picked up the accused as the victim identified them in the CCTV footage. We are re-investigating the entire case. Things will be clear in the next few days.”