Original subtitles

School started at 8:30 a.m. as usual.

After finishing school at around noon,

I spoke to my mom and immediately went to go play.

I played for a bit and then, headed for home when I got tired.

I knocked on the door a couple of times.

But nobody answered.

Amma!

When I knocked a third time, it opened.

But it wasn't my mother who opened it.

As soon as it opened, he was standing right there.

When I entered the room, my mother was lying unconscious.

On top of her was a pile of saris that had fallen out of the wardrobe.

Blood was flowing over the saris like water.

When I went looking for him, he was gone.

If you are to be born Be born in Kannada land

If you are to step on Step on Kannada soil

Till the late 90s Bangalore was definitely a pensioner's paradise.

It was a very slow-paced life.

There was a lot of trust in society.

This life is a horsecart That drives forward our fate

But then everything changed because of him.

This is the story of a freak!

He sent shock waves through the entire state.

Young girls dreaded stepping out of their homes upon hearing his name.

You'll never see him coming.

But when he does,

he brings disaster.

Neither the police nor the public could detect him in a crowd.

It is lurking in the dark.

It is waiting to attack somebody in the daytime.

We would receive nearly 50 to 100 calls every day!

A major assault has happened to a pregnant woman.

Please hurry!

The culture of installing grills on doors started with his stories.

So Bangalore suddenly started looking very dangerous.

His method of attacking women is the same every time.

Our elders would say, he would come from the bushes, drag you away, and kill you.

He devoured women like a beast.

We cannot even imagine how intelligent he is.

It was a demonic act.

He's a beast. He's like an animal.

You're very clever, aren't you?

You think you can run?

Chitradurga is a district with over 150 years of history.

Earlier it was a shrubland dotted with forests and hillocks.

Even today, Chitradurga is sparsely populated.

Back then there were just three police stations.

The Town Police Station, the Rural Police Station,

and the Fort Police Station.

My name is H. Anjaneya.

I joined the police department as a sub-inspector.

Back in the day, there were very few police personnel and fewer officers.

The kind of crime news then

was of people gambling or smoking in theaters.

There was a government worker in Chitradurga.

Her name was Divya.

Divya was nice. She was charitable.

She must have been about 35 to 40 years old then.

It was 10:45 in the morning.

After getting off the bus,

it was a kilometer-long trail with barbed fences on either side.

That was a desolate place.

And it was difficult to spot someone walking down that path.

She still hadn't taken off the jewelry she'd worn for Diwali.

Getting off the bus as usual,

Divya had only walked two minutes down that path.

When I rushed to the spot without delay, I was very saddened by what I saw.

I was a Circle Inspector then.

I gathered all the information and went to the Rural Police Station.

The complainant was present there as well.

And in a state of shock.

When I got there...

Divya was lying naked, with no clothes on her body.

When I inquired about what happened, she said,

"A young man of about 20 to 25 years accosted me."

"He attacked me and beat me up."

"And...

he told me that he desired me."

What these two phrases inform us

is that he was there with the intention to rape.

According to what Divya said,

he gagged her mouth firmly to ensure that she doesn't make a sound.

Gagging her, he tore off the clothes she was wearing

and threw them on some bushes.

He didn't remove the earrings in her ears.

He ripped them out.

There's a lot of difference between removing and ripping.

When he rips it, her earlobes tear.

Yet, he gives it no thought.

Then he bashes her face with his fist.

Her face swells up.

No one is around to help her.

But fearing someone might come there and satisfied with his loot,

he runs off with it.

As she lay there, the villagers just stood around like mute spectators.

"Please get me transferred from here!"

She was weeping. Tears were streaming.

Her face was bloodied.

From that one statement, one can understand...

"After what happened to me, I just want to leave this place at once!"

She didn't talk about lodging a complaint or filing a case.

"I can't face this society anymore!"

She was traumatized.

After cleaning her face with water,

we covered her up and made her sit in the shade.

Making her feel safe, we left with her.

Barring the theft of her earrings and anklets,

she never mentioned the sexual assault.

Even though Divya's robbery case was registered at the Rural Police station,

we hadn't reported it in our papers at that time as we were unaware of it.

The incident that really shook up the entire district

was what happened to a student named Pallavi.

Pallavi was a minor girl.

It was the month of December.

The days were short, and the nights long.

It would get dark a lot sooner.

That evening,

while there was still some light, she left for a flour mill.

Back then, Chitradurga had very few flour mills.

She left for the mill at six that evening

only to never return.

Wondering why she wasn't back yet,

her family scoured the neighborhood,

inquiring from door to door

only to find that Pallavi wasn't at any of her friend's homes.

That road ran from Chitradurga to Turuvanur.

Turuvanur Road was a narrow, tar road, about 8 to 10 feet wide.

Dirt tracks and open drains ran beside it on either side.

The municipality then wasn't equipped enough

to provide street lamps at night.

The girl goes missing on the evening of the 6th,

but the family does not report it.

Only on the evening of the 7th, do they lodge a complaint.

My name is Ajjappa.

In December 1996,

I was the Circle Inspector in the Chitradurga Town Circle.

I was in charge of three police stations.

Due to ample instances of girls eloping with teenage boys,

people normally don't even file complaints

thinking that's what happened.

They track them down themselves and get them married or separate them.

Because of this, they don't approach the police station immediately

assuming that they may have eloped.

Whatever transpired on 6th December 1996,

came to light only on 8th December 1996.

Two days later.

This was all vacant, all of it.

Even that side had no houses.

There were only these two houses at that time.

This one was under construction, and the remaining plots were empty.

Even this plot was empty.

There was an old compound wall here.

We would walk through here. That tamarind tree was right here.

There was a barbed wire fence here back in the day.

Wild bushes had grown all over.

The corpse lay here with its head to the south. It was kept naked.

Our police personnel who had informed me that morning

had covered the body with a bed sheet.

They'd removed her clothes forcibly.

Her chudidar was lying on a bush. Her pants too were lying on a bush.

There were semen stains on them.

I noticed immediately that she was a young girl,

who'd been kidnapped by some miscreants in the night,

gang-raped, smothered, and suffocated her to death.

And that more than two people had assaulted her.

Could've been two or three or four.

Another unique factor was that in December,

due to the cyclonic weather, the skies were overcast.

There wasn't much sunlight.

This had delayed the decomposition of the body.

A living person was found dead after 34 hours.

And it was fresh. Killed and dumped on the same night.

"The private parts have wounds that have clotted."

"Blood clots are present on her back from being pressed against the ground."

This means that she was raped in an open field.

After noting these down, we sent the body for post-mortem.

Here, the girl is very young.

Found dead.

And half-naked.

There are multiple injuries, including small scratches.

Also, there was a bite mark.

It could have been a lust bite.

And the doctor finds that she has died due to smothering.

Smothering means the closing of one's mouth and nostrils

which prevents air entry into the lungs and causes death.

There were injuries under the inner part of the lips

which suggests that there was a force that crushed the lips against the teeth.

And they conclude the death is due to smothering

and she has been sexually abused.

She died on the 6th evening itself.

Since there are many injuries on the body

and as she was conscious of what was happening,

she must have resisted a lot.

NEWS HAWK

To inform the entire district of a young girl's tragedy,

the likes of which had never been seen or heard before,

we ran the story in our newspapers.

"Fear grips the public."

"A minor girl named Pallav was kidnapped and brutally murdered

by unknown miscreants

who dumped her body on the outskirts of the city."

Up until then, Chitradurga had never witnessed an incident as gruesome as this.

Everybody began worrying about the safety of the women in their homes.

Pallavi was wearing earrings in her ears, and anklets on her feet.

Those two items had gone missing.

Finding them would point them in the right direction.

Most notably, on the anklets...

were engravings that said "A1."

They were on her sister's anklets as well

because they had had them made at the same place.

In the police department,

we usually form a squad called the "Crime Staff."

Forming a team with a maximum of five members,

we instruct them to collect information

on thieves, troublemakers, and cheats in the town area.

Through their investigation,

they informed us of some guys who would harass girls near a toll gate,

snatch money from them, sexually assault them and shoo them away.

They had information that they're indulging in such activities.

Those parts were mostly frequented by such flashy hooligans.

Merely based on rumors, the police started investigating the usual suspects.

But when there was no significant progress seen for about a week or ten days,

the people of Chitradurga reacted very emotionally.

Was it a gang rape or a single person?

The Police had no idea.

The Police were just waiting patiently in the initial days.

That's when unrest began among the people.

This incident was discussed in every household.

Even after a month, the police failed to solve the case.

Women's rights organizations took to the streets to protest.

The media started writing against the police.

With each passing day, the pressure grew on the police.

When nearly a month had passed since Pallavi's murder,

an anonymous letter arrives at the Superintendent of Police's office.

"A nameless letter has arrived

detailing the involvement of the children of influential people in this incident."

"It hints at the involvement of the son of a retired headmaster."

"The involvement of the son of a renowned doctor."

"Based on this letter, we'll expedite the investigation,"

said the then SP when we met him.

Basis which we published the names of certain probables in our newspaper.

No such letter ever reached me.

If they had sent me that letter, I would've personally made arrests.

The word "influential" sparked all kinds of speculation.

"Who could these 'influential' people be?"

Doctors' children over the age of 18.

The children of engineers.

Children of teachers.

The police began making a checklist of all those guys.

In that list were about 50 to 60 names.

We didn't summon any rich people's kids, at least while I was around.

I don't know if any were summoned, or released, after my time.

Consequently, the police investigation and the police themselves

understandably came under doubt.

All the allegations targeted Ajjappa's investigation.

Considering that, we also insisted in our newspaper

that the officer be transferred.

"Pallavi Murder."

"Setting aside religious and caste divides,

citizens unite to hold massive demonstrations."

"Besides screaming in protest till their voices reached the clouds,

a peaceful Chitradurga lockdown was conducted successfully."

There were no protests. Only the newspapers claimed so.

The only thing important to these newspaper journalists

was to have me transferred.

Journalists need a scapegoat.

And usually, that's the police.

But by then there was tremendous pressure on the government.

There were demands for the case to be transferred to the CID or the CBI.

So about a month in, the government transferred Ajjappa from Chitradurga.

My name is Dr. DC Rajappa.

I am a retired Deputy Inspector General of Police.

From February 1996 to April 1997

for about one year and two months, I served in the CID.

When discussing who should handle this case in the CID,

they learned that I'm from the Chitradurga District

and handed the complete supervision of the case to me.

Since Chitradurga police found no leads in their investigation,

the CID set aside the anonymous letter for the time being

and restarted the investigation from a fresh angle.

When DySP Rajappa and his team first arrived in Chitradurga,

they started inquiring if similar crimes had taken place.

If there had been other attacks on women.

They were unaware of Divya's assault

or the details of her case at the Rural Police Station.

As it was merely registered as a robbery.

It never occurred to anyone that the two cases might be connected.

But just two days before Pallavi had gone missing,

another attack had taken place.

The CID team received a tip-off

that just two days before Pallavi went missing,

another girl had been attacked very close to that location.

We also received information that the girl was the daughter of a milkman.

In all, we found about four milkmen in the surrounding villages.

Very importantly, I asked to check if any of them had a daughter

who had come of age.

And that's when someone informed me

that one of those milkmen did have a young daughter.

I picked him up for questioning immediately.

4th December 1996, meaning just two days before Pallavi went missing,

there was a young girl

who worked at a local store in Chitradurga called Geeta.

Geeta's father would deliver milk to some houses.

And in the evening, he would meet Geeta and walk her back home.

When questioned, he admitted,

"Yes sir, something did happen to my daughter Geeta."

"On 4th December, while my daughter was at work,

I went there to go pick her up."

Her father stops at a pharmacy

but asks her to walk ahead.

And she does.

As she's walking,

she notices a man wearing a cap coming down from the opposite direction.

He simply passes her by.

Unperturbed, she continues walking on by herself

assuming that her father is not far behind.

A few steps ahead, she gets the feeling that she's being followed.

Turning back, she sees the same man walking behind her.

She is suddenly afraid.

Realizing that he is stalking her, she makes a run for it.

He starts running too, and coming up from behind...

...He first grabs her hair and yanks her.

As she struggles to free herself,

he chokes her windpipe tightly using his thumb and index finger.

And whispers, "You're very clever, aren't you? You think you can run?"

Choking her windpipe to ensure she can't scream,

he pushes her to the ground.

In an attempt to fight back, Geeta in turn tries to grab his hair.

And in that struggle, his cap slips off.

That's when she notices

that he has a policeman's haircut, with trimmed sides.

So she's unable to grip his hair.

And just then she hears her father approaching.

She manages to free herself a little and scream.

Approaching from behind, her father picks up a rock and throws it.

Hearing her father approaching, she finds some courage

and putting all her strength into it, she shoves him away.

As soon as he's struck by some rocks and fearing capture,

he flees over some bushes.

They have a suspicion that her attacker could be a policeman.

She's afraid that if he in fact is a policeman,

it would be like inviting trouble home.

Village folk have their own set of apprehensions.

"Do we really need this?"

"The girl is okay, right?"

"Let's just be careful going forward."

So they don't lodge a police complaint.

So after convincing him, we called his daughter in.

The daughter too repeated exactly what the father had said, in detail.

Another very interesting development was

when she revealed that she had seen him again.

We were surprised.

When we asked her where

she said she'd seen him at the Chitradurga sports ground.

"Why did you go there?"

"I work with the Home Guards now.

And so, I had been summoned for the Republic Day parade rehearsals."

"And as a Home Guards personnel, I went there to participate."

In small towns, Home Guards is like a police job.

But it's an honorary police job.

After her incident,

Geeta's friend urges her to join the Home Guards.

So a couple of weeks after she's attacked,

Geeta joins the Home Guards.

And as soon as she does,

the Republic Day parade rehearsals start in January.

"So on the 22nd, as I was participating in the rehearsals,

I was in the first row. At the front of the platoon."

There were some police trainees who were readying the ground.

To prepare the ground, they were drawing track lines using chalk

which would be used for the marching.

At the rehearsals, she notices a trainee.

And figures correctly that

it was he who had attacked her that day.

Because he was only about an inch or two from her

when he lay on top of her

his face was imprinted on her mind.

It was now 100% confirmed that he was a cop.

She's petrified because he's a cop. Because her assumptions were right.

She is scared stiff.

She doesn't tell anyone there. But informs her father back home.

When the CID received that information,

they ask her if she can identify him if he was shown to her.

"I will definitely identify him," she replies.

Because we had received such crucial information,

we immediately summoned the person in charge

of ground preparations on that day.

Upon questioning, he revealed that he had four other recruits with him

for ground preparations.

Rajappa instructs the man to bring the four recruits

to a government guest house for identification.

Geeta and the CID officers were inside the guest house.

And the recruits were outside.

They positioned Geeta behind a window.

And the recruits on ground duty that day were paraded outside.

The CID notice that of the four, only three people had shown up.

They task the men with performing simple tasks

like clearing rocks, sweeping, and some other odd jobs.

Standing inside the room, we showed her the men through the window.

Since we can't show them to her directly, she saw them through the window.

When the first three arrived, she took one look

and said that it wasn't any of them.

She is somewhat terrified.

When asked where the fourth guy was

they said he'll be arriving any minute now on his bicycle.

Just then the fourth guy arrived on a ladies' bicycle.

The moment she sees him, Geeta's face is stricken with fear.

And the officers notice that.

As soon as he parked the cycle and turned,

"That's him!" She insisted.

When we inquired who he was

the others informed us that he was one of the constables in training.

And that his name is Umesh Reddy.

I enrolled in the District Armed Reserve, on 10th July 1996.

He enrolled two months after me.

He told us, he was recruited by Civil Police Department

and we believed him.

He was a nice guy.

When he was with us, he had no bad habits.

Of any kind.

Be it tobacco or cigarettes. He had none of it.

He was very cordial with us.

When we enrolled, the barracks had just opened up.

It was called the jail quarters.

He lived there. He had no roommates.

He lived alone.

He always kept his room locked.

He entered alone. He exited alone.

He never went to anyone's room or allowed anyone into his.

He used to have a bicycle.

He always rode around on his cycle. And he always rode alone.

He never spoke with anyone much.

He was a loner.

We came to be acquainted because not many people spoke Hindi.

We were the only Hindi speakers.

He was also very good at training because he had been trained previously.

In the Central Reserve Police Force, where he had served before.

He was highly trained. He was very fit.

But where he was posted under the CRPF, he never mentioned it to anyone.

Because when he was in the CRPF, he was once posted in Kashmir.

After training, when he was deployed in Kashmir,

he had been posted outside a commandant's house for guard duty.

When he was posted as a guard there,

he attempted to rape his commandant's daughter.

He escapes from there.

He knew that if caught, he wouldn't be spared.

He escapes and runs back.

Coming to Chitradurga, he joins the police department as a trainee.

Police training goes on till 6 p.m.

After which they're free for two hours until 8 p.m.

They're summoned for a roll call at 8 p.m.

So nobody knew where Umesh Reddy would go

between six to eight.

Even on the evening of 6th December

nobody knew where he was or where he came from.

In December '96 a sports meet had taken place.

An annual police sports meet is held over three days.

On Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

He came to us at the end of the sports meet.

When everything had wrapped up, at around 7:30 p.m.

There was a wound above his eye.

We asked him what happened.

What Umesh Reddy told us in his own words was that

at the sports meet, as he was moving tables,

one of them slipped and hit him.

"What table?"

"One of the tables from the sports meet suddenly slipped and got me near my eye."

He claimed that he hurt his eye trying to move tables

and they had to believe him.

Because there was no other proof against it.

After she identifies him,

Geeta is summoned to the police station the next day.

At the police station, they bring her face-to-face with Umesh.

When they are face-to-face, she sort of retreats.

She is afraid.

But despite that, she identifies him as her attacker.

Looking to escape the situation, he tells the police,

"She and I are in a relationship."

"We are together and do everything together."

"She's only doing this because she is miffed with me."

Geeta immediately tells a police officer to ask Umesh what her name is.

"Tell us her name then," they ask him.

But he doesn't know her name.

He is unable to say her name and gets caught there.

When he is caught there, he is placed under arrest.

In Pallavi's case, some jewelry had gone missing.

Hoping to find that missing jewelry under these circumstances,

we took him to his room for inspection.

They go there under the suspicion that the same man who attacked Geeta

also murdered Pallavi.

They were looking for her golden earrings

and the "A1" anklets.

But when they took him to his room, the police were shell-shocked.