Fight over girlfriend turns into three-hour nightmare for Ajmer student who was put up at IIT hostel during Mood Indigo festival. Mumbai Police book the four Mumbai students on assault and torture charges



The assault took place inside one of the hostel rooms at the IIT-B campus in Powai on December 24

Four IIT-Bombay students are in the dock for assaulting and torturing a student from Rajasthan, who was in the city to attend the college’s annual Mood Indigo festival. While investigations are still on, the student’s friendship with a girl in Ajmer, which has caused problems in the past, is suspected to be the reason behind the assault.

According to the police, the victim, Ashutosh Bagora (20), who originally hails from Kota in Rajasthan, had come along with a group of 25 students from the College of Engineering in Ajmer to participate at the Mood Indigo festival last week.

Since Bagora couldn’t find any accommodation in town, he decided to stay with his friend Divyanshu Vijay, who lives in the IIT-Bombay hostel.

Bagora alleged that on December 24, around 2.30 am, when he was at one of the events, he received a call from Vijay. “He asked him to return to the hostel immediately, as it was really late and his roommates wanted to knock off to bed,” an officer with the Powai police said.

However, when Bagora entered the hostel building, Shubham Pande, who was part of the group that was visiting from Ajmer, stopped him on the first floor of the building. Pande got hold of Bagora and dragged him to Vjiay’s room. “Apart from Vijay, there were four other boys from the Ajmer college — Divyansh Chaudhary (20), Utkarsh Sharma (20), Sanchit Shriwastav (18) and Sobit Kankaria (19) — waiting for him in the room,” the officer said.

Chaudhary allegedly showed Bagora a photograph of a man, and asked him to identify the person. When Bagora identified him as Rajat Shukla, Chaudhary slapped him and asked Bagora to address Shukla as “Rajat Bhaiyya”.

Meanwhile, Vijay tried to pacify Chaudhary, but the others started beating him up. When Bagora started crying out in pain, Vijay managed to get him out and take him to his friend Shivang Sharma’s room. However, his problems didn’t end there.

Sometime later Vijay returned and told Bagora that the boys wanted to discuss a matter concerning his girlfriend. The two returned to Vijay’s room again, and this time the group made a phone call to Shukla, who was in Ajmer. “He instructed them to beat him up,” the official said.

Soon after the call, Bagora was asked to go and buy a pack of cigarettes from the college gate. When he returned, the torture escalated. “The boys told me to remove my shirt and asked me to dance to one Rajasthani song. Since I was terribly frightened, I did as they said,” Bagora said in his statement. After this, Chaudhary asked him to dance like a bargirl. When Bagora started crying loudly, the group started beating him up again.

A security guard heard his cries and rushed up to inquire, but the group told the guard that they were celebrating Bagora’s birthday.

After the three-hour ordeal, the boys finally let off Bagora, but warned him against informing anyone about the assault. “They beat my son like an animal and also tortured him with cigarette butts,” Savita, Bagora’s mother has alleged.

Following Bagora’s complaint, the police booked Sharma, Pande, Chaudhary and Shukla under Sections 342 (wrongful confinement), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 504 (intentional insult), 506 (criminal Intimidation), 109 and 34 (common intention) of the IPC.