The accused Dr Ashok Yadav, who had devised a strategy to throw acid on his 30-year-old batchmate, was fixated with her and took recourse to such an extreme step to ensure she only married him and no one else. Yadav wanted the attackers to throw acid on her in a way that didn’t completely disfigure her but enough to ensure the man she was betrothed to called off the wedding.
The plan was supposed to be executed on December 17 but the woman took the car to hospital that day instead of the scooter. Yadav met the victim in Russia but they soon lost contact. later when the victim joined work at ESIC Hospital, they were back in touch. Police officers during their investigation scanned the call data records of the victim and Yadav’s number surfaced many a time. Police officers called Yadav in for questioning but he stoutly denied all charges levelled against him. His behaviour at the hospital was shifty, which raised even more eyebrows. The accused used to call the victim over 10 times a day. The accused had earlier opened a call centre with one Vaibhav, who was an employee there.
Yadav had told Vaibhav that he loved the woman and wanted to marry her but she was not responding to his overtures. Since the accused was a friend of the victim, she had told him about marriage proposals coming her way. Yadav wanted to scar her thinking it would dissuade marriage proposals. To ensure a fail-safe plan, Yadav had also conducted a dry run. He filled up a syringe with water instead of acid and had the perpetrators he had hired to ‘attack’ him.
On the day of the incident, Yadav met the victim near her residence. He offered to ride her scooter for a distance before getting off. He did this to ensure the other accused identified the victim. Yadav never liked the victim talking to anyone and therefore, had asked the juveniles to rob her bag as well. He knew the victim had scrawled the numbers of her ‘friends’ in a ‘pink diary’. He wanted to destroy both her diary and her mobile phone. The last location of the victim’s mobile phone was near a Mayapuri bus depot where Yadav’s phone was reportedly active. This helped nail Yadav’s artifice. When he was brought in for questioning again, he broke down and confessed to being the mastermind.