Brother-in-law 'faked' KG Halli molestation to marry woman

She wasn't harassed; suspect aimed to malign her, pressure her family: cops

The “molestation” of a burqa-wearing woman in KG Halli, east Bengaluru, was faked by her brother-in-law who was desperate to marry her, police investigation has found. The suspect, Irshad Khan, 34, was arrested on Sunday.

The incident — captured by a CCTV camera — doesn’t show Laila (name changed) being molested; it just shows a limping man stalking her at Govindapura Circle around 6.25 am on Friday morning. The same day, the woman and her family made a complaint at the jurisdictional KG Halli police station and handed over the footage. The woman, who is a sales executive at a private company in Koramangala, had said she was walking to the bus stop to go to her workplace when the “incident” occurred.

Police investigation threw up an anticlimax. Police found that Khan, a sales executive at a private firm, was in a relationship with Laila, the 25-year-old sister of his wife. He had married three years ago and has a three-year-old child. The family lives in KG Halli. Laila lives with them.

The CCTV footage shows the “molester” walking with a limp. Police found that Khan, who had accompanied Laila to file the complaint on Friday, also has a limp. They clandestinely filmed his way of walking and compared it with the “molester’s”. Both matched. They detained him for questioning and he spilled the beans, said Hemant Nimbalkar, Additional Commissioner of Police (East).

Khan told the police that Laila’s family had learnt about their relationship and decided to marry her off. He offered to marry her but her brother opposed it. The Kammanahalli molestation — captured on CCTV camera and widely circulated in the media — came as a godsend for Khan. He planned to fake a similar incident. The motive was clear: he wanted to malign Laila and pressure her family to marry her off to him, the investigating officer said.

On January 6, at 5 am, he did a recce of Govindapura Circle, looking for CCTV cameras. He found one outside a shop. Meanwhile, the woman left her house to go to her workplace. Khan stalked her, which was recorded by the camera, the officer said. In the afternoon, Khan went to the shop where the camera was installed and told the shopkeeper about the “molestation”. He requested him to give the footage. The shopkeeper obliged him. But Khan edited the footage and gave it to television channels.

What really foxed police was Laila’s silence during the investigation. She didn’t mention Khan. The officer said they would question her about her relationship with Khan. Initially, she said she sustained injuries after falling down when the “molester” pounced on her. She changed her statement during the medical examination, saying the hand injury was caused by a pen and the leg was wounded by a stone. She said she bit her tongue out of panic.

The officer said they would book Laila if it emerged that she wasn’t molested. He suspected that Laila and Khan together planned the incident. The actual footage shows them walking together before he stalked her.

He blamed cops
Khan had accompanied Laila to the police station. He created a scene there and blamed lax police security for the “incident”. He also approached NGOs. 

400 calls in a few days
Khan has three cellphones and used one of them to exclusively talk to Laila. He made around 400 calls over a few days from this number. “This made us suspicious. When we questioned him, he opened up about the relationship,” a police officer said. Police have also seized the clothes Khan was wearing during the “incident”.