Parents of three-year-old challenge SIT probe in Gurugram court
The parents of a three-year-old sexual assault survivor have filed a petition in a Gurugram court challenging the Special Investigation Team's (SIT) probe as "one-sided, incomplete and unreliable." The petition, filed on July 9, 2026, seeks a further investigation into the case and urges the court to reject the chargesheet filed by the SIT on May 16, 2026.
The father of the child moved the local court alleging significant lapses in how the investigation was conducted. According to the petition, the SIT "inexplicably exonerated" three key suspects, including a domestic help who worked at the family's Gurugram flat, despite the toddler repeatedly and consistently identifying them.
The other suspects in the case include the former domestic help’s brother-in-law, who was named as the prime accused, and another domestic help who worked at the gated apartment complex.
The petition argues that the SIT ignored vital evidence, including a disclosure made by the prime accused during custodial interrogation on April 15, which explicitly implicated the family's domestic help in the commission of the offense.
Furthermore, the petition highlights overlapping timelines on December 26, the day of the incident. The SIT's own analysis placed the prime accused near the gated society between 3:54 p.m. and 4:22 p.m. CCTV footage showed the child left the residence with the domestic help at 3:22 p.m. and returned at 4:58 p.m. The domestic help admitted she lost sight of the child for about 10 minutes during this window while playing hide-and-seek.
The father's plea questions how a stranger could have accessed the child or synchronized his presence without the facilitation of the person who had exclusive custody of the toddler at the time.
The petition also criticizes the SIT's over-reliance on a digital gate-management application and call detail records while ignoring basic forensic work. It notes that the gate-management app was unreliable, as the SIT itself concluded the primary accused entered the society multiple times without those entries being recorded on the app.
Additionally, the petition raises objections over the initial response of the local police. It alleges that officers failed to secure the crime scene, resulting in the loss of forensic evidence, failed to retrieve CCTV footage before it was overwritten, and failed to trace an auto-rickshaw mentioned by the child.
The case had previously drawn scrutiny from the Supreme Court. On March 24, former Gurugram Police chief Vikas Arora had filed an affidavit in the top court explaining a delay of over a month in lodging the initial FIR.
