Original subtitles

My name is Suresh.

I was born in 1992.

My father was a doctor by profession.

My mother was a nurse in the same nursing home.

My father passed away when I was three and a half years old.

So after he passed away, we moved to Dasarahalli.

February 28, 1998.

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

My mother made me Maggi, and after I'd eaten it,

she dropped me off at school at 8:30.

After finishing school around noon,

she brought me back, and then, I ate Maggi again.

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!

I thought my mother must have stepped out or was napping.

So I went back to play.

I played again, returned home, and knocked again.

I banged on the door some seven or eight times.

But nobody came out.

There were three or four windows, but all of them were shut.

I called out to her for 15 minutes.

Amma!

I swung on the gate on the veranda for a while.

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.

I had to lift my head up to look at him.

Because I was still little.

He wasn't very big. More of a medium built.

All I remember is that he wore a full-sleeved checked shirt with jeans.

I think he was just about to leave.

When I asked who he was,

he just said, "I'm Venkatesh, a friend of your mother's."

The house was totally messed up.

As if it was ransacked in a hurry.

On the right was a room.

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.

Totally bare, her body was completely covered with just saris.

Blood was flowing over the saris like water.

I think she was bleeding from her head or from under her legs.

I was tearing up and didn't know how to react.

He said my mother was possessed.

Which is why she'd lost consciousness and that he'd go get a doctor.

He told me to stay put.

I didn't want to let him go

because I was scared to see my mother like that.

My mother was lying down and I sat right by her face.

He sat me down with my arms folded and my finger on my lips.

As you do in school.

Her breathing still echoes in my ears.

It was as loud as someone wheezing to breathe through a mask.

It was that loud.

He sat by me for a while and then stood up.

Even after assaulting her, he was very soft-spoken,

as if nothing had happened.

On top of that, I remember he had a smile on his face.

I couldn't make any sense of it then.

Now, when I think about it,

those were psychotic vibrations on his face.

He pretended like nothing had happened.

Despite doing so much, his face conveyed innocence.

He stepped out for something and didn't return for over 30 minutes.

When I went looking for him, he was gone.

By then, a lot of things in our house were missing.

I waited thinking he'd gone to fetch a doctor.

I played with my toys in the living room, as my mother lay inside.

Bored of playing, I went back to the gate after a while.

When I was swinging on it, two women from the neighborhood asked me

about my mother as they hadn't seen her since that morning.

I told them that my mother was possessed.

That she was lying down and that a man had gone to get a doctor.

One of the women went inside to look and ran out screaming.

They informed the police who arrived sometime in the evening.

The landlady and some neighbors had gathered outside the house

discussing how such an incident was a first for the neighborhood.

Jayashree's body was completely naked.

Both her hands were tied to a window and her legs were spread apart.

There was vaginal bleeding.

Injuries found on Jayashree by the doctor...

He finds a faint ligature mark on the neck.

There could be an attempt to constrict the neck using a material like a sari.

But the doctor mentions the cause of death as smothering.

Apart from that, breast injuries and injury to lips...

All this suggest that it's a violent sexual intercourse.

I've been a cop for 38 years.

But I've never seen anything this cruel.

I summoned the dog squad, a fingerprint expert, and a photographer.

The fingerprint expert found prints on a bureau.

It was a demonic act.

They didn't let me go inside.

They made me sit outside.

Nobody let me in.

The night my mother passed away

they put her body in an ambulance and took her away.

The last time I saw my mother's face was in that room.

I never saw her face again.

Just two days after Jayashree's murder,

in the same neighborhood,

a lady called Nithya was alone at home.

It was 2nd March.

Peenya Police Station.

We're calling from Ravi Kirloskar Hospital.

-Tell me. -We have a medico-legal case.

It's a major assault.

On a pregnant woman. Please hurry.

We'll alert a patrol car immediately.

According to Nithya, at about two in the afternoon

while she was alone at home, an unknown person came to the door

under the pretext of asking about an address.

When she said she had no idea, he barged into the house,

bolted the door,

dragged her to the kitchen,

and threatened her to hand him all her jewelry.

In that moment,

the pregnant woman decides to fight back.

Bashing his head with a pressure cooker,

she runs out screaming.

The moment she screams, her neighbors come to her aid.

They catch him, thrash him, and inform the police.

The Peenya police come and arrest him.

And that's when Nyamegowda realizes that he's seen the man before.

The moment they produced the culprit in front of me,

I was 100% sure that he was the same man I'd seen

at the Mico Layout Police Station.

I've seen you at Mico Layout. "I know you're him," I said.

But he didn't admit it.

If he admitted he was Umesh Reddy,

he would have gone to jail for all of Umesh Reddy's crimes.

So he tried to escape by using an alias.

But when the police interrogated him in detail,

it was confirmed that he was Umesh Reddy.

When asked where he'd kept all his loot, he leads them to a house.

It was a simple house, not too big.

But he revealed a lot of items in the house.

Like gold ornaments.

There were VCRs, TVs.

There were a lot of saris and also women's undergarments.

There were about 2 lakh rupees of hard cash.

And over 3 to 4 kgs of gold.

There were about 190 items in total.

In the Jayashree case, we'd found scientific evidence.

The recovery of Umesh Reddy's fingerprints on the bureau

was a major piece of evidence.

In Nithya's case, he was caught red-handed.

We recovered a knife from him.

The knife had bloodstains. And her sari also had blood on it.

The two blood groups matched in the forensic report.

That proved to be clinching evidence in that case.

After a detailed interrogation, he finally admitted to everything.

And I recorded his voluntary statement.

Because of that,

the police were able to identify several of Umesh Reddy's survivors

who came forward and identified him as their attacker.

Among these were Amruta and Fatima.

Umesh Reddy allegedly attacked both of them on the same day,

19th February.

Just ten days before Jayashree's murder.

And so it was confirmed that it indeed was Umesh Reddy.

You can see the modus-operandi of Umesh Reddy changed

from the Chitradurga days to the days of the Jayashree murder

where he actually preyed on housewives who were within four walls of their home.

He only committed offenses between 10 and 3 o'clock

because he knew the men would be away at work.

He was a cunning criminal who planned everything.

He's so clever, he knows that the door entry is so important.

Because you need that door opened.

Pretending to be a cable operator or some such,

gaining entry into the house,

stripping the women and molesting them was his modus operandi.

His intention is to escape and he wants the space for that.

It may be a few minutes but that's enough for him to escape from the place.

So that is the reason why he disrobes them.

She can't scream, even if she wanted.

She can't run, even if she wanted.

Because her body is bare.

Others will see her.

By stripping the person you are actually denying that person

their dignity, their personhood and therefore

making them putty in your hands.

He's a very intelligent man

who knows what his victim-survivor is thinking.

A repeat offender has got a signature way of killing.

Pallavi and Jayashree... Inner side of the lips is injured in both cases.

That means both have died due to smothering

and in both cases, there was penetration without consent

and is violent in nature.

In the 90s,

Bangalore had a very primitive policing system.

We mostly used police radio and walkie-talkies.

This hindered us from directly contacting other police stations.

Everything had to be routed through the control room.

The information was not yet computerized.

An escape in Chitradurga wouldn't be known in Bellary.

An escape in Bellary wouldn't be known in Chitradurga.

Due to this information gap in the police department,

Umesh's notoriety was not fully known.

Umesh Reddy used this gap only.

Umesh Reddy possessed the intelligence to gauge cops at once.

What is their aptitude?

What are their qualities?

How can they be deceived?

Pretending. Acting. Faking innocence.

Always looking to escape, planning his next move.

His criminal mind is always running.

He had handcuffs in his hands, he runs away.

He had a cast on his leg, and with the cast he ran away.

And there were two more such incidents in 1998.

He attempted to run away from a hospital once.

He was once being taken to Bellary court,

in connection to his Bellary escape case.

The funny thing is, he escaped again while being produced in an escape case.

He had become such a hot potato that they had no idea how to handle him.

Around March 4, 2002,

Umesh Reddy was being brought to Bangalore from Bellary jail

to be produced in connection to a case.

As soon as he found out that he would be taken to Bangalore in a week

he pretended to have a fever, barely able to walk even.

Considering his plight, the jail authorities felt that

a police car would be unnecessary, and decided to send him on a bus instead.

The escorting police helped him off the bus at a restaurant

so that he could eat something.

When they stopped at the restaurant,

Umesh Reddy told them that his stomach was upset

and that he needed to use the toilet.

Bangalore is afraid!

Women at home.

Women at work.

Everyone is afraid of that pervert.

You'll never see him coming.

But when he does, he brings disaster.

By 2002, there came about a big change in journalism.

WARRANT IN PURSUIT OF CRIME

Private news channels had recently entered the market.

And with that came the concept of television ratings.

There was a huge competition between the news channels.

The media in those days were looking for ways

by which they could sell this story of murders taking place everywhere

in a way that captured public imagination.

Yes!

Because there are monsters in the capital.

Deviants who tear and devour women and children.

So as soon as they heard that Umesh Reddy had escaped and that he was a psychopath,

every TV channel had its own type of story about Umesh Reddy.

So they covered his story in a very big way.

Once a policeman, he had stooped to raping girls.

He was addicted to wearing and enjoying women's undergarments.

Especially after his escape, he constantly changed his appearance.

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

It is lurking in the dark.

It is waiting to attack somebody in the daytime.

Umesh Reddy had become a threat to all of Karnataka.

Such fear psychosis first came to Bangalore after his 2002 escape.

For the first time, everybody started feeling very insecure.

Girls stopped stepping out. They wouldn't go work in the fields.

We were scared to even dry clothes outside our homes. Including me.

In villages, there were no toilets inside the houses and everyone had to step out.

Even going to the toilet, we'd worry that Umesh would come from the bushes,

drag them away, and kill them.

"Never be alone! Always have company!" Such was this atmosphere of terror.

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

So Bangalore suddenly started looking very dangerous.

There were lots of false rumors as well. "He raped here." "He murdered there."

We would receive nearly 50 to 100 calls every day!

"Here's Umesh Reddy!" "There's Umesh Reddy!"

Our patrol cars were always on the road.

We'd go check, but it was never him. Always someone else.

The phone calls and our search efforts

lasted about two to three months.

People were in panic.

Reddy, who escaped from the police yet again

committed rapes and murders time and again!

But he never came into anyone's grasp.

As days passed, the police's tensions kept mounting.

One, the crime... The act, whatever it is...

That itself gets focussed on and the sensational aspects of it.

And then, you know what happens when it's to do with a sexual crime.

Everybody's... I don't know what it is. Repressed fantasies come to the fore.

And then you have the media going absolutely berserk.

This whole way of framing violence against women

and sexual violence specifically also as true crime

can be extremely counterproductive.

One, it externalizes the problem.

Who perpetrates a crime? A criminal. I'm not a criminal.

It's very comforting for the viewer to see things in black and white.

Because it also tells them that you're not one of them.

You are a good person and you know the difference between good and bad.

So the viewer is not the criminal.

He's this terrible fellow... This Umesh Reddy... Good God!

You can sit and say, "I am not like him."

And it makes out as if it's an aberration.

Whereas violence against women is not an aberration.

Sexual violence is not an aberration.

It happens within every home.

It has been happening.

So when you turn it into a true crime it is something that can be packaged

and it can be externalized, and of course, it's something that can be sold.

And in order to sell it, you have to sensationalize it.

In fact, we had a problem with the way that you had even pitched this.

Which is why we were reluctant to come onboard

saying, "Are we going to then be perpetuating this?"

In a way, no matter how much we criticize true crime and sensationalism,

in at least one of the cases, the rarest case

it has helped the police as well as the society.

People never forgot the faces of criminals who were at large.

I was at the station, sipping coffee with my morning paper,

when a known person came,

not to the main police station but straight to my chamber.

I asked him what happened and why he looked so worried.

The man said, "Umesh Reddy is at a barbershop getting a shave.

Please come and catch him!"

"Are you sure? Or have you confused someone else for Umesh Reddy?"

"We get a hundred calls about this every day."

"Have you surely seen him?" I asked.

An auto-rickshaw driver had seen Umesh Reddy's photo in a tabloid.

The driver rushes to the Yeshwanthpur Police to inform them

that Umesh Reddy is getting a haircut just opposite the station.

Opposite our police station, is a barbershop.

He'd come to that shop itself.

Exactly opposite our police station.

"Please hurry! You must believe me! Bring him in and question him

What do you have to lose?" he asked.

By the time I reached the place with some four or five cops,

he had already left the barbershop.

By that time, he was already walking towards the railway station.

Had there been a five-minute delay, we'd have no chance.

He would've crossed the railway tracks.

He was wearing a striped shirt, a cap, and sunglasses.

He must've come there with the assumption

that there'd be no cop around that early in the morning.

Otherwise, he'd never take a chance. He's very intelligent.

"I'm not Umesh Reddy!" screamed this dangerous pervert.

Moreover, because of his new avatar,

the Umesh Reddy nabbed in Chitradurga looked very different from this man.

So we brought him in and interrogated him.

But no matter how much we tried, he never disclosed his identity.

"I'm not Umesh Reddy! Why are you questioning me?"

Behind our police station was Nyamegowda's house.

He found out somehow and rushed to our station.

Nyamegowda confirmed he was Umesh Reddy and requested us not to let him go.

He thought that Umesh might have come to attack him.

Since I'd seized a lot of gold and cash from him,

he did have a vendetta against me.

He had threatened and verbally abused me on several occasions in court.

After bringing him to the station, we initiated the procedure.

We made him remove his clothes.

Under his clothes, he was wearing ladies' blouse.

He was wearing them on both his kneecaps.

Never in my service, had I seen clothes worn with such perversion.

I don't know the reason behind it.

But he was addicted to sexual offenses.

Objectively speaking, it can be said that Umesh Reddy is a sex maniac.

It is anybody's assessment as a common man.

Leave apart the fact that I'm a police officer.

MORE FAMOUS THAN THE CHIEF MINISTER

Sexuality is a major prism through which you see good and evil.

And he's seen as evil because he's said to use women's clothes.

It is outrageous. It outraged them to such an extent.

Because you're living in a masculine world and anybody who's not male

is abnormal to a greater or lesser extent.

So if the woman is the other of the man

the transvestite doesn't even figure in the scheme of things.

The stereotypes are breaking down in today's age.

Cross-dressing will soon become part of normal society.

But the police see it as a complete vindication

of the way they frame the individual.

That is used as deviance rather than as learning.

We weren't interested in psychologically or behaviorally studying him

because we didn't want the accused to benefit from it.

And if the criminals prove themselves as mentally unstable,

they may get acquitted in some of the crimes.

I met Umesh Reddy only once.

I went near him and just asked,

"What is this all about?"

He literally started crying like a baby.

He said, "I did nothing. These people are framing me."

"Whatever case they can't solve, they're putting it on me."

"I wanted to become a cop. Now they've made me a criminal."

He literally cried like a child.

When I saw his acting abilities,

I thought he'd have made a fantastic film actor.

He's a cunning predator, with the face of a cow.

A wolf in sheep's clothing.

He's intelligent beyond our imagination.

He's smarter than all of us.

I don't think he's intelligent, but...

You can say it is "negative intelligence."

The police get rewarded on the basis of cases cracked

not on the basis of how much thinking went into a particular case.

Because we are so anxious to see people in black and white.

This person who has deviated from the norm should be put away.

Should be hanged

because society is too invested in the visceral edge of the crime.

Through this process, we have actually lost an understanding

of what made these people.

Because it tells us what to do

when the next person like this appears on the scene.

DISTRICT CIVIL COURTS

Even before the judgment had been pronounced,

people had gathered in thousands around the court.

Everyone had come to see who Umesh Reddy was!

-Make way. -Move aside.

It was a circus! There was so much curiosity!

-Umesh! -Let him pass! Make way!

-Move aside! -Out of the way!

Stand back, everyone!

According to the Evidence Act,

there is a specific procedure to identify an accused.

In the Divya case, the prosecution did not conduct an identification parade

witnessed by an Executive Magistrate.

Because she formally identified Umesh Reddy only in court

her testimony was rejected.

Fearing humiliation, women generally don't reveal the truth

in police stations and courts

usually reporting such crimes as thefts and robberies instead.

We can only ask the women why.

In a way for the police or any law enforcement authorities

to say "why aren't women coming to us to report?"

They should take a hard look at themselves.

To come out and say, "I've been sexually assaulted or I've been raped"

is in itself very difficult.

We've already been forced and harassed, both physically and mentally.

After reporting the incident, the society, the community,

the family, patriarchal institutions,

and the system overall, see her as wrong.

"How did he do it?" "How did he touch you?"

"What did you feel?" "Did you not express your objection?"

"Did you feel nothing when he touched your clothes?"

"Here's a needle. Let's see you thread it."

Did you understand?

"If the hand moves, how is it possible to thread the needle?

Similarly, if you didn't cooperate, how could he have done it?"

Such are their theories.

Such nonsensical questions frustrate her in the witness box.

Instead, they would prefer to go back to rebuild their lives and get on with it.

I think that is one way of the women resisting the system

and it is condemning the system.

As time goes by, they have even more reasons not to talk.

Because they would have school-going children.

They would have all kinds of things to contend with.

Unless they feel the strength coming from within

and unless they feel their families supporting them

they will never speak now.

Now, more than ever.

Because time has passed. The pain also fades away a little bit.

In Geeta's case, it seems that the patriarchal mindset of the judge

did play a role in his decision to actually throw out the case.

That he was there, is a fact. His intention is a fact.

Will he be considered guilty only after the rape had taken place?

Isn't the one who attempts rape also guilty?

Even the way the name of this act is framed...

"Outraging the modesty of a woman..." It sounds quite outrageous.

In the case involving Fatima what happened was that

she was traumatized to such an extent

that she could not testify in court.

As far as I know, the cruelty inflicted on Fatima

was one of the worst of all the cases.

She suffers from psychological problems even today.

The stolen items were identified by her husband.

But the acquittal was awarded merely on the grounds that she didn't.

The court knew she had psychological issues.

They acquitted Umesh Reddy due to a very small reason.

Our criminal justice system is anyway a very fraught process.

He escaped from the criminal justice system

because of the ineptitude of the criminal justice system.

Umesh Reddy was like a cat. He had nine lives almost.

At every level, there were failures which gave him an extra life.

The three cases that actually bore fruit in many ways

was because of the credibility and integrity of one officer.

Jayashree's was that one case where it felt like justice had truly been done.

The night my mother passed away,

as her body was being carried into an ambulance,

a constable named Garudappa took me home with him.

On our way, I asked him why my mother wasn't joining us.

That's when he told me she was no more.

That she was dead.

Because he had no other relatives, Suresh mostly lived

in Garudappa's house after his mother's death.

At home, he introduced me to his kids.

He started treating me like one of his own kids.

I used to joke that Suresh was almost like Garudappa's adopted son.

He would come to our police station as well.

Playing around in my chamber all the time, he had become a part of the police family.

I didn't know who was what there.

Cops, robbers, good people or bad... I knew nothing.

Everybody was human. My friends.

I'd play with them. Talk to them. Just be with them.

The police even took me to the station

to show me ornaments, VCR, TV, and all that he'd taken.

To see if I'd recognize them.

I did. I told them that these were from our house.

Then Nyamegowda called me to him, saying they've caught someone.

They'd put him in a room and he was made to sit on the floor.

The policemen had surrounded him.

"Is he the man who had come to your house that day?" he asked.

The man looked at me.

I looked at him and said, "It's him!"

Within a second, I said it was him.

That day, his face had a certain softness and he was smiling.

But this was totally the opposite.

Looking at the crime, the style of the murder

and considering it a rarest of rare case,

Justice Sukanya awarded Umesh Reddy the death penalty.

Securing a conviction is common. But a death sentence is very rare.

-Move that way! -Umesh, speak up!

-Press folks, stand back! -Get him in!

Wait!

I was very happy to hear that he'd been awarded a death sentence.

The citizens were equally happy.

It'll be hard to survive this.

My brother has been treated unjustly.

These are all false cases.

They gave him a death sentence, unfairly and without reason.

Our fellow villagers just want to exile us and take all that's ours.

When I asked him how all this happened, he just said,

"Mother, I'll tell you this once. I haven't seen or done any such deed.

Falling into bad company, I may have committed petty crimes.

But apart from that, I've done nothing else."

Today, we have nobody's mercy or support.

Only we know our difficulties.

Claiming that he had an aging mother to care for,

Umesh pleaded for a lenient punishment.

"If you give me a death sentence, who will care for my mother?",

he cried in court.

But Justice Sukanya gave it right back to him.

"You have a sister and brothers to care for your mother.

But who will care for that child, Suresh?"

With that, she upheld the death sentence.

Because it wasn't right for him to stay in a policeman's house for too long,

we moved Suresh to a child welfare center.

I cried a lot.

Garudappa, too, felt very bad.

"It's just for three or four months," he said before leaving.

"I'll come back for you."

He never came back.

Lots of people came forward to adopt me.

Someone new would come to see me every week.

They all brought boxes of sweets.

"Tell us! Will you come to our house?"

All I remember is that my adoptive father took me home

from the remand home in his car one day.

It all felt very casual. It didn't feel important or exciting.

My life had gone past me very casually.

I've adapted to the life I have now.

I've realized that the parents I have now are my mother and father.

To me, forgiveness doesn't come easily.

People like him should be killed.

It'll be good to hang him as soon as possible.

Apart from me, he's wronged so many others

who couldn't talk about what he did to them.

Their happiness will make me happy.

I don't dream of my mother anymore. She appeared in them only once.

On the night she passed away, Garudappa took me to his house.

That night as I slept, my mother came to me in a white sari,

asked me to be happy and slowly returned to the light.

And I woke up screaming.

I think her soul found salvation that night.

She came to see me one last time, saying, "Be good, and you'll do well,"

she disappeared into the light.

Justice for Pallavi died the day the CID decided

to record a second statement from Umesh Reddy.

They already had Umesh Reddy's first confession.

They could have discarded the rest and worked on that theory itself

because they had recovered that stolen article.

It was an open and shut case.

But the problem was with the CID investigation itself.

By dragging five more people into that case,

they unnecessarily complicated the case.

Amidst all this, I wonder why they made Sudhir an approver.

He revealed in court that he'd been forced to record his statement

and turned hostile in court.

The court accepted that it was done under duress.

So, the entire case collapsed the moment Sudhir and Umesh Reddy

turned hostile during the trials.

It's been about 25 years since Pallavi passed away.

Since Pallavi was murdered. Since Pallavi was subjected to violence.

But even to this day, we don't know who did it.

Should Pallavi be reincarnated to identify these people?

The court doesn't accept the evidence they submit.

And they don't have the evidence the court needs.

It's a game of tug of war.

Where is the justice for her?

What message are you sending to the people?

If there's a thorn in our path, won't we be careful?

That's how one should be.

If you say, "Nothing can happen to me." it will definitely prick you.

Maybe not today, but someday, it definitely will.

When she goes to the flour mill all by herself,

her elders should've been mindful enough to go with her.

In that sense, around 25% of the fault always lies with the victim.

And 75% with the criminals.

It's a very thin line that divides the protector from the violator.

So that's why we say please be wary of saviors.

You don't know when they will turn into your violators.

Because that's a mindset that does not respect a woman's agency.

It does not respect her dignity. It does not respect her autonomy.

It does not exercise her right to choose.

It does not.

"Your childhood was spent in which city of dearth

That your youth never grasped its own worth?"

"Why were you, into the night gone

To return departed, at light of dawn?"

"What happened on that night so bleak?"

"Break your silence, for heaven's speak."

"Everybody turns to you, in gloom"

"In your silence they rage, they fume."

"In your silence they gloom."

In 2018, when I was serving as the Police Commissioner of Belgaum,

during a raid on the prison, I met a man in the last cell.

He was in his late-40s and had a white beard.

He asked me how I was and if I was doing well.

Surprised, I wondered who this person was who spoke to me as if he knew me.

I asked him who he was.

He said, "You're the one who arrested me and sent me to prison 25 years ago.

Do you not remember me?"

I was really shocked.

I never imagined that I'd meet Umesh Reddy like this after 25 years.

That was the last time I met him.