CBI files chargesheet against Gujarat 'teacher' who eloped with 18-year-old girl

Fifty-year-old Dhaval Trivedi had promised a girl in Chotila, a temple town about 150 km away from Ahmedabad in Surendranagar district, that he would take her to a good school either in Nepal or Japan where he claimed he was working as the principal. He told her that, as per her horoscope, her future was in a foreign land and he could take her there since he was a rich man and teaching was his hobby, something that had brought him to Chotila. It took less than two weeks of 'dulcet tones' to convince the girl who was studying in a college in Rajkot, the nearest city, to leave her home with him to study.

These were the findings of the CBI which recently filed a chargesheet against Trivedi in the case. The 400-page chargesheet includes statements of witnesses and other documents revealing how Trivedi, already convicted for life for luring two minor school girls and raping them in March 2018, 'brainwashed' the girl and took her to dozens of places across some north Indian states and Nepal. Trivedi, as per the allegations, raped and impregnated her.

The CBI chargesheet reveals that Trivedi, who was lodged at the Rajkot jail, filed two separate pleas for parole in the Gujarat High Court -- one through an advocate and another through the jail authority. Both the applications were heard by different judges who granted him parole for 15 days and seven days respectively. The investigation found that Trivedi had then gone to Chotila and stayed at a rest house where he faked his name as 'Dharmendra Trivedi'. One of the jail inmates, Jaydeep Dhadhal, helped him find a job as a teacher by introducing him to the principal of a high school.

According to the CBI, Trivedi got another two-week parole and went to Chotila again where he started spoken English classes in partnership with one Harshad Khakkhar and started coaching nine girl students on July 23, 2018. He returned to jail two days later and was out again on a 14-day furlough on July 28 and subsequently went to Chotila and started teaching. On August 11, he ran away with one of the girls whose parents lodged an FIR for kidnapping and rape at the Chotila police station. After the local police failed to trace them, the Gujarat High Court ordered a CBI probe into the case.

The chargesheet says that between July 23 and July 31, Trivedi and the girl exchanged 80 SMSes and calls while 1,400 to 1,500 SMSes and calls were shared between them from August 1 to August 11, the day they eloped. The CBI said that the girl was "brainwashed" by the accused. The duo went to Delhi where Trivedi sold the girl's phone for Rs 4,000 at a shop where he introduced her as his daughter, claiming that the money was needed for her treatment. The mobile phone has been recovered by the police.

The probe has revealed that they kept traveling from one city to another while he disguised himself as a Sikh man and faked his name as 'Satnam Singh, Mukhtiyar Singh, Surjeet Singh'.

In January, 2019, the girl found out that she was pregnant and wanted to abort the child but failed to do so. She gave birth to a baby boy prematurely at the MGM hospital in Jamshedpur where she was admitted as the wife of "Mukhtiyar Singh".

In March 2020, the girl left Trivedi and wandered in various cities in states like Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Bihar with her child. She found refuge in Bihar's Muzaffarpur where she stayed with one Pancham Mishra during the coronavirus lockdown and reached home in June 2020.

She told the CBI that Trivedi didn't marry her and had intercourse with her against her will. Trivedi was finally nabbed by a team of Delhi police last month from Solan in Himachal Pradesh. He is lodged at the Sabarmati Central Jail at present.