‘Every 3 Days…’: How School Trustees In Badlapur Rape Case Evaded Cops

Mumbai:

The two trustees of the school in Thane’s Badlapur where two minor girls were sexually assaulted by a sweeper kept changing their locations every two-three days, switched off their phones and did not contact their families even once in the month and a half that they were on the run, police officials have said.

Sources in the Special Investigation Team (SIT) set up to investigate the rape cases said the two men, Uday Kotwal and Tushar Apte, fled Badlapur on August 20, days after the news of the assault broke and it started becoming clear to them that they would be arrested. The Thane Police wanted to question them because it suspected that there was negligence on their part in not reporting the assaults.

The main accused, Akshay Shinde, was arrested in August and killed in a police encounter the next month. The police had said he was being transferred when he snatched a weapon from a police official and opened fire, and was killed in retaliatory firing.

The two trustees were arrested on Wednesday and they told officials of the SIT that once they realised that they could be arrested, they went from Badlapur to Satara about 250 km away. They said they did so because they were very scared but have now realised that it was a mistake. 

During the 40-odd days that they were on the run, they said they kept changing their locations every two to three days but stayed in western Maharashtra the entire time. They also knew that their phones could be used to track them and kept them switched off.

One of the trustees told the police that they realised that their families would be kept under surveillance and so both of them decided that they would not contact them.

They had filed anticipatory bail petitions in the Bombay High Court, which had rejected them on Tuesday and they were arrested from Karjat in Raigad district the next day.

The trustees were produced in court on Thursday and got bail in connection with the first information report (FIR) filed by the families of one of the girls but were immediately arrested in the second FIR. They got bail in the second case on Friday.