Two arrested in Sudiksha Bhati's death case, police say no evidence of harassment

Bulandshahr: Two people have been arrested in connection with the death of a 20-year-old student here, police said on Sunday while ruling out that she was harassed by bike-borne men before being killed in an accident.

Sudiksha Bhati, who hailed from Deri Scanar village in Gautam Buddh Nagar's Dadri, died on August 10 in a road crash in Bulandshahr district while she was pillion riding a motorcycle with her younger cousin, a minor.

Police said they arrested the two people - Deepak Choudhary and Raju - on the basis of CCTV camera footage.

Sudiksha, an academically bright student, was pursuing a graduation course in entrepreneurship at Babson College, Massachusetts (US), on a scholarship and was scheduled to go back on August 20.

While her family has alleged that the road crash took place because two unidentified motorcycle-borne men were following her two-wheeler and harassing her, the police on Sunday said it has found no evidence to corroborate their claims.

Senior Superintendent of Police Santosh Kumar Singh and District Magistrate Ravindra Kumar during a press conference on Sunday ruled out harassment or a motorcycle stunt as cause of death. They made it clear that the woman's death was an accident.

The Bulandshahr police checked details of more than 10,700 bullet motorcycles in less than a week while working on "limited clues" to find the people involved in the road crash, Singh said.

The only leads we had initially was that the bullet bike had UP 13' (registration code of Bulandshahr) as its starting numbers and that there were two people riding it, he said.

There are 10,719 bullet motorcycles registered in the district. Multiple police teams working on the case traced the owners of these motorcycles and contacted them. Call data records (CDRs) of all these people were procured and analysed but none of them were found on the route of the location at the time of the incident, Singh told reporters.

However, the breakthrough came when the police procured video footage from eight CCTV cameras one of them showing the number of the bullet motorcycle which was involved in the incident in Aurangabad area of Bulandshahr.

Finally, we looked for CCTV footage and checked it from 5 km behind the incident spot in order to trace the accused bike riders. One of the CCTV cameras had caught the bike in motion and right behind it was the two-wheeler on which Sudhiksha was riding pillion, Singh said.

After going through the footage from the eight CCTV cameras, police have not found any evidence of harassment with the woman, the officials said.

On the basis of the SIT's probe, eye-witness accounts and CCTV video footages, the incident is not a case of sexual harassment and Sudiksha's death occurred in a road accident, district magistrate Kumar said.

Singh said that during interrogation, accused Deepak revealed that he is employed with a contractor and on the day the incident occured he was on his way to a designated site along with Raju.

Deepak told police that while the duo was on the road on a bullet motorcycle, they had to suddenly apply the brakes when an autorickshaw and a bullock cart came in its way as a result of which the bike behind them, on which Sudiksha was riding pillion, rammed into their vehicle and she fell on the road and died.

According to police, after the incident came in the limelight Deepak got scared and in order to evade identification he got his bike modified by changing its tyres, silencer and even the vehicle registration number plate that had 'Jat' written on it.

Police have recovered the Royal Field bullet motorcycle and it pre-modification parts including the number plate, they said.

Both the motorcycles - Deepak's and Raju's as well as the one on which Sudiksha was riding pillion - were being driven on high speed of approximately 80 kmph and were travelling at a distance from each other, they said.

All through the journey, the bullet bike was ahead of Sudiksha's two-wheeler, maintaining a distance of 200 metres to 1 km or 1 minute to 30 seconds throughout, he said.

Both the vehicles were moving at a fast speed, at least 80 kmph. Both the bikes covered a distance of 10 km in almost 9 minutes 30 seconds and in order to cover this distance in this time limit, a vehicle would have to be at a speed of around 80 kmph, he added.

In order to probe Sudiksha's death, a Special Investigation Team (SIT) was formed comprising Circle Officer Diksha Singh and two inspectors from the UP Police Crime Branch, the district magistrate said.

Police also interrogated the man from whose mobile phone the woman's family was contacted after the accident and he told investigators that it was a case of road mishap and she died on the spot.

Police had earlier said some people were "trying to twist the narrative of the incident" by claiming that the woman was being sexually harassed because of which the accident took place.

"It appears that after the body reached her Deri Scanar village, some people tried to twist the narrative of the incident. Since the girl had got a huge scholarship package (to study in the US), there could have been a thought of demand (for compensation) in the people," Senior Superintendent of Police Santosh Kumar Singh had said on Thursday.