The owner of a dairy shop in Ladpur village on the northwestern periphery of Delhi, Deepak Dahiya reaches his place of business to load unload milk boxes at around 2.30am every morning. On January 1, following his routine, though it was New Year’s Day, Dahiya was standing outside his shop at around 3.15am when he heard a car drive past gingerly, making a sound as if it had a burst tyre.
As he turned and spotted the Maruti Suzuki Baleno, something did not feel right. And, as he looked closely, a chill ran down his spine.
“I heard a car’s noise, and initially it sounded like it’s tyre had burst, but it was still being driven. It was going at the speed of barely 20km per hour, so I could clearly see what was happened. That’s when I saw the body of a girl beneath the car — between the two left side tyres,” Dahiya said.
He quickly made a call to the police control room, and was asked to call back in a couple of minutes, he said.
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“I told them that there were about four-five people in the car, and that I wasn’t sure how dangerous they could be. I thought I will follow them, but not stop them.” About 10 minutes later, at around 3:30am, the vehicle crossed his shop again, having taken a U-turn and returned. That’s when he started following the car on his electric scooty — beginning a chase that would result in unearthing a horrific incident of death, negligence, and crime that shocked Delhi on the first day of 2023.
“As I started going after them, I realised they were driving very slow, and the body was still attached to the car. It’s difficult to believe that they didn’t know there was something beneath their car. Meanwhile, I was giving almost minute-by-minute updates to the police. I would have called them 18-20 times in the next 45 minutes, of which one call lasted more than 10 minutes,” he said.
As he followed the vehicle, he saw it was following a pattern — it would turn towards Kanjhawala, and then came back to Ladpur, after driving about 1.5km. In a little while, Dahiya’s help at the shop had finished unloading the milk, and his car, a Mahindra Bolero, was now free. So he quickly changed vehicles the next time the Baleno crossed his shop, and asked his help, Sahil, to come with them.
“They had gone ahead at this time but because they were driving slow, it wasn’t difficult for us to spot them. They had gone towards Qutubgarh this time — about 2km from my shop — and when I saw them, they were taking a U-turn. Though I continued to follow them, I realised that the body wasn’t attached to the car anymore,” he said.
But Dahiya didn’t stop chasing them and they went towards Begumpur.
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On the way, he spotted two PCR vans on the way, but they did not take any action, suggesting they were unaware of his SOS calls. In Begumpur, Dahiya said, he told officials sitting in a third PCR van what he had seen. “They flagged the car down, but let the people go after speaking to them,” Dahiya said.
Dahiya said that when he saw the PCR van officials letting the Baleno go, he returned to his shop. “Within minutes of returning to the shop, I saw police and some people on the road rushing to the same stretch I had seen those men driving the Baleno with the body earlier. I followed the police, which led me to the spot where another police team had found the body on the road. I then returned home.”
Special commissioner of police Dependra Pathak confirmed that Dahiya had indeed made the calls to police control room and helped police track the car. Pathak said Dahiya’s allegations that the third PCR van left the spot after stopping the vehicle would be probed.
To be sure, the Union home ministry has directed police chief Sanjay Arora to ask special commissioner of police Shalini Singh to conduct a detailed inquiry and submit a report immediately. Officials aware of the probe details said the inquiry will also look into the alleged lapses on the part of the police.
“There is little that the police did despite calling them several times. I was following the car right from the start. If police were active the culprits would have been caught from the spot. I have a recording of my conversation with police control room officials,” Dahiya added.
