Way back in 2010, on the ill-fated July 6 evening, the victim came home as usual at around 9 and went to bed, unmindful of the tragedy lying in wait for her the next morning
Hyderabad Police is neither NYPD nor Scotland Yard. Pot-bellied cops are good at greasing their palms but not at cracking sensational cases. Lice have been feeding themselves with files of scores of cases that shook the nation time and again.
It has been two long years a US girl was brutally raped inside her rented penthouse at Banjara Hills house at gunpoint. Here is the heartrending story of the hapless victim.
The fate could not have been worst for a young woman who left her home for serving another country. First, she is brutally raped several times in her residence at gunpoint, then robbed of her cash and threatened to kill if she does not pay more. And finally when she goes to the police, what awaits her is more trauma than she has already been subjected. Finally she bids adieu to the city, with tears in her eyes, deep gashes in her heart and an indelible stigma that would haunt her for the rest of her life.
This is not the gist of a bestseller, but the hard reality that happened not in some faraway land, but in our very own Hyderabad.
Isabella Jones (name changed) came to Hyderabad three and a half year ago to work for an NGO - Clinton Foundation - with hopes of leading a happy life in her favorite country and serve the needy. Born and brought up in New York, Isabella joined the foundation and first worked in Cambodia for some time.
And when she boarded a flight to Hyderabad, poor Isabella never knew what fate had in store for her. Everything looked fine when she reached the city, she joined her office at Begumpet and took a pent house for rent in a duplex house in the upscale suburb of Banjara Hills.
On that ill-fated July 6 evening, she came home as usual at around 9 and dropped into the landlord's house on the ground floor. She spoke to the landlord, a retired professor of Osmania University, on topic of general interest, and presented him a book on nutrition. After about 20 minutes of small talk, Isabella climbed up the cast-iron spiral staircase to the room she has been living comfortably for months.
She made a few phone calls and then went to sleep. And all of a sudden, like in those western crime stories, in the wee hours of July 7, someone pounced on her out of nowhere in the darkness. Scared to death, Isabella jumped out of bed in an effort to flee. The attacker grabbed a frail and terrified Isabella, tore a piece of pillow cover and blindfolded her. Isabella tried to clutch the mugger's cheek with full force until his skin was peeled off. Suddenly, the ruffian pointed an assault weapon on her ribs and whispered, "Keep quiet and still. Otherwise, I'll shoot you." Isabella was petrified to death. She was unable to move. He tied her hands with a nylon rope and forced her to the bed.
And he raped her brutally, not once, but four times at a stretch. And even as Isabella was lying on the bed like a dead body, the psychopath went to the bathroom, had a shower and came back.
The horror didn't end there. He took some 600 Euro from her and threatened to kill her is she didn't make ready another Rs 5 lakh by July 8. Then, without leaving any clue, the rapist left the room.
Overpowered by shock and fear, a feeble Isabella called up her senior colleague Manohar and a close friend Dr. Ali. Then she called up the landlord and narrated the incident. Police were informed, and a complaint was lodged at the Banjara Hills police station. And what ensued was the usual police mockery.
In an apparent move to crack the case, different police teams acted but rather insensitively than intelligently. In the process they once again proved how ineffectual they are. Other than adding to the trauma of the agonized rape victim and harassing some innocents, the police could not do anything.
Shockingly, the police could not even find a single female police officer to elicit details from Isabella who felt humiliated by this inhuman attitude of the city police. Highly placed sources in the city police department told Hyderabad Journal that male officers questioned her time and again in such a sensitive case like rape.
Isabella later said she was subjected to humiliation and was being treated more as an accused than a victim, one of her close friends told Hyderabad Journal. She also told her friends that she had decided not to pursue the case anymore and was leaving Hyderabad forever.
No one knows where she is today. Hope she must be living somewhere far away peacefully trying to forget the Hyderabad nightmare…
Funny pet to sniff out the rapist!
While the cops handling the case turned out to be insensitive, the dog that was brought to the crime scene on the day of the incident proved that it would make a perfect pet who seeks pampering, and surely not a hard-nosed canine.
Named Shadow, the black police dog could not even climb the spiral staircase that leads to the rape victim's penthouse. The handlers had to carry it on their hands even as the investigating officers and onlookers burst out into laughter. Shadow, however, climbed down the staircase very carefully as though it was going to lead the cops to the culprit.
But Shadow did what nobody had expected, at least not the cops. The dog lifted its left hind leg and pissed even as the officials were eagerly looking for some leads, raising more laughter.
Shadow then walked down the street but returned without any result. The handlers had to carry it again to the penthouse. This time the handler did not get support from colleagues and had to carry the dog all alone. By the time he reached the penthouse, the handler was profusely sweating. Some police personnel were heard saying the dog appears more to be a pet than a trained one. Shadow has made the dog squad a laughing stock this day, they lamented.
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