Pune: For most of the 10 days that he was absconding from police, Nilesh Chavan, a co-accused in the Vaishnavi Hagawane death case, seemed confident the authorities had no idea where he was. But it was a single call from his girlfriend’s phone that helped police track him to the northern parts of the country and later, into Nepal. He would eventually be placed under arrest in Uttar Pradesh’s Maharajganj.“He used his girlfriend’s phone to stay in touch with contacts in Pune,” said an officer with Pimpri Chinchwad police. “He had taken her along claiming they were going on a vacation, and drove to Delhi,” the police officer said.During his time on the run, police said Chavan avoided using debit cards, paid only cash and even picked shops that didn’t have CCTV. He also kept moving, from one place to another. The police officer, citing interviews with Chavan, said he decided to go on the run soon after Warje police registered a case against him, for allegedly threatening a relative of Vaishnavi’s with a gun. After that alleged incident with the gun, Bavdhan police named him as a co-suspect in Vaishnavi’s death investigation. The Pimpri Chinchwad police official said Chavan, along with his girlfriend – she has not been named in any FIR or case – first headed to Delhi, where it’s believed they stayed for a day or two.“He then sent her back to Pune and proceeded to UP, en route to Nepal. Sometime during this trip, he used his girlfriend’s high-end smartphone to video call a contact in Pune. Chavan used an end-to-end encrypted app, thinking the call would not be traced, but we had already put his Pune contact’s phone under surveillance,” the officer said.In fact, PCMC police’s cyber wing was already monitoring calls to Chavan’s close friends and relatives. “After that one call he placed to Pune, our cyber cell, led by assistant police inspector Pravin Swami, were alerted and they soon managed to get the IP address of the handset he used. They found that he was on a private bus. The team then managed to get CCTV footage from inside that bus, which confirmed he was on his way to UP from Delhi,” the officer said, adding that from UP, Chavan managed to cross into Nepal.“When we discovered that he was in Nepal, Pimpri Chinchwad police commissioner Vinoy Kumar Choubey alerted his counterparts there and they helped us get the phone number of a local cab driver. We studied this driver’s call history and the cyber cell zeroed in on a number Chavan had purchased in Nepal. We had his location,” the officer said.Chavan was found staying at a low-budget lodge in Nepal’s Bhairahawa (officially, Siddharthanagar), around 200km from capital Kathmandu. “We brought him to Maharajganj in UP where on May 30 (Friday), he was formally placed under arrest. We recovered three mobile handsets from him,” the Pimpri Chinchwad police officer said.Police officials TOI spoke to said Chavan was making calls to Pune to stay updated on the investigation into Vaishnavi’s death. On May 16, the 24-year-old was found hanging at her in-law’s house in Bhukum. Her family have alleged that she was being harassed for dowry.
