It had cracked Nirbhaya case against all odds
While the Supreme Court has been applauded for its verdict in the Nirbhaya gang rape incident and the parents of the deceased victim have breathed a sigh of relief, the real hero in the episode is Delhi Police. It's important to place on record the competence of the police personnel who were involved in building a water-tight case, although they had very little to start with. More importantly, they cracked the crime in record time — and that too during a period when Delhi Police, then helmed by Commissioner Neeraj Kumar — was the target of daily verbal attacks and undisguised derision from large sections of the media, politicians, civil society activists and a few vested interests. It had seemed that all of society had come together with just one goal: To shred the police's reputation to smithereens. It would have been easy for the police personnel, especially those associated with the investigation, to give up and blunder along. After all, how much more did they stand to lose after all this, by way of their repute! It is to Delhi Police's credit, though, that it did not let the negative atmospherics impact its professional conduct. Not only did it solve the crime but it did so despite having facing what is commonly termed as a ‘blind case'. In retrospect, it appears that the best in Delhi Police's personnel came out under the extreme pressure they worked under. Quite easily, the Nirbhaya case will be considered as among the most accomplished successes of this police force. All those people who had at that time, for whatever reasons, pilloried and ridiculed the police's inquiries, should now have the decency to acknowledge their mistake and, even if late in the day, give the due that Delhi Police deserves in the matter at hand.
let's re-emphasise that the police had begun with virtually nothing in their hands — just the information that five to six people were involved in the incident which happened in a moving private white bus. The CCTV footage accessed of the site was unclear, and the image the police got of the white vehicle was poor, with the registration number not visible. After running the tape many times — according to one report, 200 times — the police managed to identify three clues: The name ‘Yadav' written on the bus, yellow curtains and a missing wheel cap. With this, the arrests of the accused happened in quick time, but that was only the starting point. Nirbhaya's dying declaration, in the form of gestures, may have nailed the accused's fortunes, but without corroborative evidence the police collected, it probably would not have sufficed for capital punishment. The charge-sheet and the supplementary versions the police filed — complete with irrefutable forensic evidence — were in themselves proof of the hard and focused work the probe personnel had put in a short span of time. With this as a base, it was left to the team of prosecutors lead by a special prosecutor, to nail the accused — and the lawyers did it admirably.