Pune’s Bopdev Ghat gang rape mastermind held in Prayagraj

Pune: The main suspect who had led the trio in the Oct 3 gang rape of a 21-year-old event management student in Bopdev Ghat was nabbed on Monday from Prayagraj in a coordinated action by the Uttar Pradesh special task force (STF) and the Pune police.
In a statement issued later, the UP STF identified the suspect as Shoaib alias Akhtar Babu Shaikh (27), a ragpicker from Adarshnagar in Mantarwadi near Phursungi, who is the trio's ringleader.Inspector Jai Prakash Singh and his STF team arrested Shaikh from a spot near Dey's Medical junction in the Janpad industrial police jurisdiction in Prayagraj around 12.30pm on Monday. The police recovered a mobile phone from him.
Pune police commissioner Amitesh Kumar told TOI, "We had sought UP STF's help to nab Shaikh after sharing inputs about his movements. Our crime branch officials flew to Delhi from Pune on Sunday night and reached Prayagraj by road to help the STF identify the suspect. Shaikh has criminal antecedents and we have secured a transit remand from a court in Prayagraj to bring him to Pune by Tuesday."
Shaikh is the second suspect to have been arrested in the case after the Pune police's crime branch had nabbed his accomplice, Chandrakumar Raviprasad Kanaujia (20), a labourer from Kadnagar in Undri, on Oct 11. Kanaujia is in police custody till Tuesday. A search is on for the third suspect.
The rape survivor, who is from Gujarat and studies in Pune, and her friend (22), a CA student from north Maharashtra, had gone to Bopdev Ghat around 11pm on Oct 3. An hour later, three men approached them near the Table Point on the ghat. They assaulted and forced the friend to remove his shirt and belt. They used the same to tie him up, before raping the young woman. The incident caused a major outrage across the state.
After a week-long investigation and search that involved 700 police personnel analysing human and technical intelligence, scanning a large number of CCTV camera footage and cell phone data, the police arrested Kanaujia on Oct 11 morning.
Kumar said, "Investigations revealed that Shaikh left Pune a day after the incident to reach Nagpur. He then travelled to Prayagraj by train after realising the police were on his trail."
Shaikh told STF members after his arrest that he visited Bopdev Ghat along with Kanaujia and their third accomplice looking to commit a robbery. They attacked the survivor and her friend after spotting the two chatting at an isolated place and robbed them of valuables. The STF statement read that Shaikh kept moving to various places after he realised Kanaujia had been arrested.