Thane: A day after the Bombay high court questioned its inaction in arresting the other accused in the Badlapur sexual assault cases, the state-appointed special investigation team (SIT), with the help of the Thane crime branch, on Wednesday arrested two trustees of the school where the assaults took place.
Police officials said that the crime branch apprehended school trust chairman Uday Kotwal (60) and trust secretary Tushar Apte (57) from Karjat in Raigad district and handed them over to the SIT. They said the duo would be produced before the special POCSO (Protection of Children from Sexual Offences) court in Kalyan on Thursday.
The incidents of assault on two four-year-old girls by a cleaner, Akshay Shinde, took place in the school on August 12 and 13, and were thereafter reported to the school principal by the girls’ parents. The principal in turn informed Kotwal and Apte, but they did not take prompt action and were thus booked in the two separate FIRs registered at Badlapur East police station, as non-reporting of sexual assault on minors is a punishable offence under the POCSO Act, 2012. Later, the police also found that the CCTV footage of the school from around mid-July to mid-August was tampered with.
In their pre-arrest bail pleas filed before the special POCSO court in Kalyan and thereafter before the high court, Kotwal and Apte maintained that they came to know about the sexual assaults only after the Badlapur East police called them for an inquiry, and so there was no question of reporting them earlier to the police.
A single-judge bench of Justice R N Laddha on Monday rejected the anticipatory bail pleas of both Kotwal and Apte—the same day when a division bench questioned the SIT for not arresting the two. Both the accused have been on the managing committee of the school for the past 15 years. Sources had alleged that the main accused, Akshay Shinde, used to work at a farmhouse owned by Apte’s family.
According to officials, the SIT had requested the Thane crime branch to collaborate in apprehending the two trustees. When the crime branch officers received information that the trustees were heading to Karjat for some work, they set a trap and successfully arrested them around 8.30 pm. “Our team has arrested the two trustees and transferred them to the SIT for further investigation,” said Dynaneshwar Chavhan, joint CP, Thane police.
The duo was booked in the second case involving the trustees and the principal concerning the alleged sexual assault on one of the girls. The three of them were booked under Sections 65(2), 74, 75, 76 of the BNS and Sections 2, 4, 8, 10 and 21 of the POCSO Act. In this case, Kotwal and Apte sought pre-arrest bail from the Kalyan sessions court on August 30 but it got rejected. They later approached the high court.
Kotwal and Apte argued in the sessions court that they had taken prompt action when they learnt of the sexual assaults on the children on August 16, and therefore should not be subject to the charges against them. The court then requested the Investigating Officer (IO) to clarify the role of the trustees. After the IO reported that the police had found evidence of negligence by the school, the court rejected the anticipatory bail application (ABA). The duo then applied to the high court.
On October 1, the Bombay high court rejected their ABA and asked why the trustees had not been arrested yet. A bench comprising Justices Revati Mohite Dere and Prithviraj Chavan denied the pre-arrest bail pleas of Kotwal and Apte amidst widespread protests following the assaults. The court criticised the delay in action by the school authorities and the police after the families reported the incidents.
Advocate-General Dr Birendra Saraf stated that the police were actively opposing the trustees’ bail pleas and that charge sheets had been filed in both cases. While the main accused, Akshay Shinde, was arrested on August 17 and later killed by police in an alleged encounter, the trustees remained at large. Opposition parties have accused the Maharashtra government of protecting the trustees due to their alleged ties to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.
The Badlapur police received complaints of the sexual assault on the two four-year-olds by Shinde, a cleaner at the school, on August 16. Shinde was hired by the school trustees just 15 days earlier without a background check. After the school authorities were informed by the parents about the incident, they initially denied that it had occurred on the school premises. This led to a strong protest by the parents outside the school and on the railway tracks at Badlapur station, resulting in a 10-hour halt in train services.
