Rape that shamed Delhi

4, 000 MEN QUESTIONED Millions of calls analysed. Case diary is the only link left to the rape of a Swiss diplomat in her own car


Punjabi looking.
Coming from a gym.
Wet hair.
Fresh deodorant.
Well-read.
I have AIDS.
Small Zippo-lighter.
Related to Hindi films.
Flawless English.
Calls cigarette a fag.


These are the jottings made seven years ago by a Delhi Police investigator, who still carries his case diary with him.

This is his hope: To find a rapist who traumatised a 28-year-old Swiss diplomat, shamed India and set off one of this city's largest manhunts.

The officer, one of the first investigators of a case that set India's violent, female-unfriendly Capital on edge, requested us not to use his name.

If he appears haunted by the case, it is with good reason: the woman was bundled into her own car outside an international film festival, a brazenness that his department and the city could not live down for months.

"A city which can't provide safety to its citizens is a failed city," said an HT editorial on October 17, 2003.

The officer is one of several still on the trail of the suspect. Based on those initial notes the investigator made in his diary, more than 4, 000 men were interrogated over two years. The police swept homes, pubs, discotheques - even hospitals, after the rapist claimed he had AIDS.

"We checked the medical records of all the hospitals and grilled all the people in the age group of 20-35 who were HIV