The Mumbai crime branch on Thursday recovered the cellphone of gangrape accused Kasim Bangali. The police will now check if Kasim had clicked the photograph of the 22-year-old photojournalist, which he is suspected to have deleted, and will retrieve it using data recovery technologies.
“Kasim had sold his phone to a person who later resold it to another person. We traced the new owner and recovered the cellphone. The phone will be sent for technical and forensic analysis for further examination. It will also help to establish additional details about calls exchanged between the accused before and after the crime,” said an officer from unit-3 of the crime branch. Bangali was arrested just two days after the gang rape when he was sleeping in Nair Hospital posing as a patient’s relative.
Earlier, the police had recovered the cellphone used by another accused Salim Ansari who had clicked the victim’s face after the crime. “He had used the flashlight feature on his phone to illuminate the girl’s face. He, however, deleted the picture the same night after the crime. Fortunately, they did not circulate the photograph,” the officer added.
The police said that they are confident of a conviction in the case after gathering forensic proof and the statements of the victim and her male friend — the two prime witnesses in the case. “We had also recovered a dupatta that was lying on the spot which the accused used to clean themselves after the crime. The cloth will definitely contain semen samples and other evidence,” joint CP Himanshu Roy said.