Greater Noida hit-&-run: How a hair strand in broken windshield led police to culprit

Vicky, son of the owner of a car repair shop in Greater Noida’s Tugalpur village, remembers his first client of the new year and the car he brought to the shop. A white Santro, with hair strands in a broken and dented windshield. The client, a middle-aged man wearing a monkey cap and muffler, came at around 9.30 in the morning, something he found unusual for January 1st. After getting his windshield replaced, the man took his car to Saddam Motors, a repair shop 20 metres away, to repair a broken headlight and a few dents on the bumper. Strangely enough, he gave two different accounts to both servicemen. To the glass shop owner, he blamed the hair strands and the broken windshield on a group of kids who allegedly threw a brick at his car. But he told the mechanic that his Santro was damaged by another car. Which of these was true? Or was the man lying to cover up something even more grave?LISTEN TO PART 1 | Greater Noida hit-&-run survivor girl gets help, but culprits may get awayThis is the story of how cops nabbed the man who had run over 20-year-old Sweety Kumari with his car on New Year's Eve in Greater Noida, despite scanty CCTV footage and eyewitnesses with no memory of the car’s number plate. But before we dig deeper into the investigation, let us jog your memory a bit. On December 31st, a white Santro swerved into a group of three final-year BTech students walking down an empty road in Beta 2 area of Greater Noida, lugging bricks for a bonfire. The impact left Sweety comatose in an ICU for days after that. For the police, some crucial pointers were missing from the investigation. None of the eyewitnesses had noted down the car’s registration number. CCTV cameras? There were none along the road or at the intersection points. There was one however, in a school adjacent to the site of the accident. But that camera points in a different direction, and as such, the only visuals it had captured were that of an Audi, a Baleno, and a Santro. The Audi owner’s account was not enough. So the search for more CCTV footage continued. Cops started combing through CCTV footage from the gates of the colonies in Greater Noida. That’s when they stumbled upon a clip of a white Santro with a broken bumper on a service road in Alpha-1 sector. But according to Mahendra Dev, the assistant commissioner of police who led the team of 17 cops, that was inconclusive.ALSO LISTEN | Why Rishabh Pant’s accident has raised concerns about pothole deathsBut the cops did not give up. Instead of starting over completely, they went through the CCTV footage and eyewitness accounts all over again. ACP Dev tells us how this led them to another lead: a clip from a colony CCTV camera of the Santro entering the Beta 2 area. Beta 2 sector is where the accident had taken place on December 31st. The cops searched the area and spotted a white Santro with a UP16 number parked inside a house, like what the driver of the Audi had recalled seeing. But that wasn’t the only confirmation. Guess who else had encountered a white Santro with a UP16 number plate in Greater Noida? The car mechanic at Saddam Motors, Asif. When a middle-aged man brought his white Santro to the repair shop on January 1st, he remembered the number plate because it was unique. UP16 AB 2700. Same as the car that was parked in the house. This guided the cops to 45-year-old contractor Gulab Singh. When they checked Singh’s mobile phone location on December 31st, they confirmed it was him- the driver of the speeding car that ran over Sweety. He was finally arrested from his house on Sunday, January 15th, less than 2 kilometres from the accident spot.After his arrest, Gulab Singh confessed to drinking and driving on December 31st. He went to the repair shops the following day to get his car fixed. After that, he went about his life as usual.Vicky, the glass shop owner’s son, told The Times of India that although he had heard about the accident on the news, he had not imagined one of his own customers to have been the culprit. He has now decided to keep a log of all suspicious vehicles that come to his shop.That’s how an investigation that had hit a dead end was brought to a close.Anchors: Surjan Singh and Sanyam SharmaAudio production: Sahil Gupta