Acid attack on 23-year-old woman pre-planned: Karnataka Police

Police have submitted a chargesheet in connection with the April 28 acid attack on a 23-year-old woman in Bengaluru and said the attack was pre-planned.

In the 770-page chargesheet submitted to the 13th additional chief metropolitan magistrate (ACMM) court, police have named 92 witnesses, including statements of two eyewitnesses taken under IPC Section 164.

Accused Nagesh Babu, who was waiting in an auto near the workplace of the woman in Bengaluru’s Sunkadakatte, had chased and poured acid on her, the chargesheet said.

Police have also submitted CCTV footage where Nagesh is seen a day before carrying out the acid attack near the victim’s office. Karnataka police had formed 10 special teams to nab the acid attacker and after 16 days of the crime, he was nabbed from Tiruvannamalai in Tamil Nadu.

Senior police officers, who investigated the case, said the man arrested for the acid attack had planned a similar attack in 2020 and procured nine litres of sulphuric acid.

According to police, the marriage of the victim’s sister was the trigger for Nagesh to plan the attack. When he came to know that her sister was engaged, he feared that the girl would also get married soon. He got restless and approached relatives of the girl with a marriage proposal. They refused. Since then, he began planning this attack.

“He had been stalking the woman for more than seven years. During this period, he had approached her multiple times with a marriage proposal. In 2020, when she refused him firmly, he had procured acid to attack her. Some of his friends, who came to know about the plan, convinced him to go ahead with the plan,” said one of the investigators.

Because he had procured acid in 2020, when he decided to take revenge on her in the second half of April, he knew where and how to procure the sulphuric acid. Nagesh used the letterhead of a private company in Bengaluru, which provides housekeeping services, to get the acid. He wrote an email to a supplier claiming that he needed two half-litre bottles of acid for the sample and a large order of eight litres.

He procured acid by April 20, however, didn’t attack her immediately. He approached her once again on April 27. He asked her to marry him and this time, the girl firmly refused his proposal. That day even the manager of the company, where the girl was working, warned him to stay away. When the girl informed her parents about his visit, they approached the attacker’s older brother.

Following this, on April 28, he went to the victim’s workplace and attacked her with sample bottles he had procured. “Hours before attacking her, he had sold all the material available in his garment factory and took cash payments. We believe that he had been planning this attack for a long time. A few years ago, he had sold some land in his hometown and started a garment factory in Bengaluru. In the past few months, he sold most of the equipment in the factory,” said the officer.

Soon after attacking the woman, he went to his older brother and told him what had happened. The older brother and another friend told Nagesh to surrender before police, but he told them that he would surrender only before the court.

With this intention, he went to a sessions court and magistrate court in the city. When the lawyers told him that there was no option available for him to surrender before the court as the FIR has not reached the court, he fled Bengaluru.

“When his plans to surrender before the court failed, he went to Hoskote (on the outskirts of Bengaluru). We were told that he went there intending to commit suicide but didn’t go through with the plan. Instead, he decided to join an ashram, for which he left for Tiruvannamalai,” said the officer.

Bengaluru police had formed seven teams with over 100 personnel to track down Nagesh. According to police, since leaving Bengaluru he didn’t use any electronic device or carried any document that would identify him. “We had sent our policemen to many parts of the country. We were told that he used to visit temples very often, particularly Tirupati. Including Tirupati, our teams had gone to several important temples. One team even went to Dehradun,” the officer added.

On May 12, two officers from Bengaluru went to the Tiruvannamalai temple where he was staying and stuck a poster with his details. The next day, a person called an inspector in the city and said someone who matches the description was at the temple that resulted in his arrest.