It is more or less Bollywood movie stuff! During the past month, a chic, young ‘student’ had become popular among students and staff of the canteen of MGM Medical College in Indore.
Dressed smartly and carrying a trademark backpack, this young girl could be seen frequenting the canteen and discussing different topics with other regular visitors. She talked about current trends popular among youngsters and about college life. Sometimes, she would take the discussion towards the serious topic of ragging which is still prevalent in professional courses institutes including medical colleges.
Though there were surmises about the ‘new student’, there was little suspicion. So when the Sanyogitaganj police in Indore summoned 11 senior students of the medical college last week and charged them with ragging juniors, after interrogation, not only these students but those at the government medical college were left shocked.
It was only then it became apparent that the young 'student', who so freely interacted with them was an undercover cop.
In this way, Shalini Chauhan, 25, a constable with the Sanyogitaganj police station managed to crack a ragging case that the others were reluctantly thinking of putting in the category of ‘unsolved blind cases’.
The Indore police was alerted to an anonymous complaint on University Grant Commission (UGC) national ragging helpline in July this year. The complaint pertained to the alleged ragging of freshers by seniors and others. The complainants mentioned that the first-year students were summoned to apartments outside college campus and made to perform obscene acts. They were also allegedly asked to talk obscenely with fellow girl students.
Sanyogitaganj police station (thana) in-charge (TI) Tehzib Qazi said that the helpline refused to divulge details of complainants and attempts to get details from social media platform (the chat on which, related to ragging, had gone viral) from US-based company were also not fruitful.
“Though the college administration got an FIR registered after we got the alert from the helpline, it was very difficult to get any details as the students were not willing to make statements. We were frustrated and thinking of putting this in the category of unsolved cases. However, our senior officers encouraged us to take out-of-the-box steps to solve the case. So we formed a team of four cops and put them undercover to get information. Shalini, who looks younger than her age, was put to work at the college canteen, where discussions take place,” Qazi told THE WEEK.
The other members of the team included sub-inspector Satyajit Singh Chouhan, head constable Kali Charan and Constable Rinku Singh Rajput.
“My senior officers including the TI motivated me to take up this undercover work. Though this was the first time that I was doing such a job in my eight-year career in the police, I wasn’t nervous and decided to give the work my best try. I was successful in getting the name of accused senior students within a month of starting the undercover work,” Chauhan says.
Shalini was incorporated into the state police force at the young age of 18 as an appointment on compassionate grounds in place of her father, who was also a constable with the Indore police. He passed away in 2010.
“I always wanted to become a cop like my father, but did not think I would be doing such a job,” she said.
A graduate from Bagli government college in Dewas - her home town, Shalini never faced anything like ragging in her academic career. However, her experience as a student as well as a cop helped her to strike up the proper conversation with students of MGM College.
“First I talked about general topics, then about ragging, and put across two or three names of (suspected) senior students. This made the students open up and give the name of accused students, which I conveyed to the TI,” she told THE WEEK.
The accused students have been suspended from the college and the police are now preparing to file a charge sheet against them in court.