Mumbai Crime: One-eyed paedophile will never touch another child again

Ayaz Ansari aka Firoze Kaniya. Illustration/Ravi Jadhav

The one-eyed paedophile will never touch anyone's child again. Ayaz Ansari, who drove terror into the hearts of parents in Mumbai, was on Tuesday sentenced to life imprisonment in one of the 13 cases registered against him. This comes three years after mid-day first broke the story about the notorious child abuser.

Ansari is facing trial in nine similar offences, while he has been acquitted in three other cases. This paper had first broken the story about the serial child molester in 2014, following which, the police swung into action and formed several teams to arrest the accused.

Cops estimate that he has sexually abused at least 50 kids, but most survivors have not come forward to give their statement.

CCTV from 2014 shows the man talking to a girl riding a bicycle. He then asks her to follow him

'Is your dad home?'
This particular case goes back to January 17, 2014, when the survivor was 10 years old. She lived with her maternal uncle, aunt and grandmother, while her parents resided in another state.

On the day of the incident, she went out to buy cheese around 7 pm. On her way back, just as she was approaching her house, the accused called out to her.

"One uncle was standing near the staircase. Uncle asked me whether my father was at home. I replied no. Uncle told me to go with him and he would give me a [phone] number. He took me to a building close to my house, but there was nobody inside," the girl testified in court on October 29, 2015.

The girl further told the court how Ansari asked her to remove her clothes and raped her. Ansari also threatened to kill her if she told anyone about the ordeal.

Ayaz Mohammad Ali Ansari aka Firoze Kaniya

Strong case
The girl revealed everything to her grandmother, who was an important witness in the case. The grandmother told the court that the victim's aunt told her that somebody had taken the girl, claiming that her father was calling her. Grandma told the court that her daughter (the aunt) also told her that after coming home, the girl had gone straight to the bathroom and gargled. Upon being questioned by her granny, the girl narrated her ordeal and the two of them went and lodged a complaint at DN Nagar police station.

The medical officer's report supported the case, and a local tailor also testified that he had seen the girl talking with Ansari. Another witness also told the court that he had seen Ansari running behind her while she was crying.

The defence lawyer, on the other hand, argued that it was a case of mistaken identity, and that Ansari was not the molester but was just a robber who was framed by the police because of media and political pressure.

But Special POCSO court Judge Surekha Patil observed, "There is no reason for the grandmother of the victim to implicate the accused. The grandmother of a girl child aged 10 years would never implicate a person only on the say of the police. She will not dare to put the dignity, reputation and honour of the child at stake."

"The testimony of victim is reliable and inspires confidence, including her confessional statement, as well history narrated at the time of medical examination, and that itself is sufficient to punish the accused," stated the judge while sentencing Ansari to a life term under Sections 376 (rape), 363 (kidnapping), 377 (unnatural offence) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the IPC, along with the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO Act).

The court also asked the accused to pay a fine of Rs 45,000, which will go as compensation to the girl.

In addition, the court has asked District Legal Services Authorities to compensate the girl adequately.

Catching the paedo
"Ansari was very smart, he would never travel by public transport. He used to steal 4-5 phones every day, but never used any of them. In fact, he never used mobile phones. It was a very difficult case to crack, said PI Ajay Kshirsagar, who along with PI Milind Desai, arrested Ansari in 2014.

The then CP Rakesh Maria made 12 teams to find the accused. They had CCTV footage of him from Sion, Amboli and Santacruz, which they matched with the picture of Ansari who had earlier been arrested for theft. "We took his picture all over Mumbai, until one day someone told us that he used to live in Juhu Galli. We interrogated his mother, who gave us his friend's phone number," added the PI.

Two days later, Ansari called his friend from a PCO, and we laid a trap when he came to meet his friend in Khar. "Those two days, we didn't go home or eat, until we caught the culprit," recalled Kshirsagar.

After he was arrested, the angry accused had even threatened to kill PI Kshirsagar once he got out of jail.