It was a normal Saturday afternoon inside a police station in Malad, Mumbai. The room, the second from the entrance to the premises, was full of complainants, each of whom sought the attention of the police officers sitting behind their desks.
A group of 7-8 people stood out. There was a woman who had come with her parents and brother seeking police help against harassment from her in-laws. By the way, her husband and her in-laws had also arrived. They were arguing loudly, their voices cutting through the noise.
Sub Inspector (SI) Ganesh Avate (35), the station duty officer, intervened trying to resolve their dispute.
Around 3 p.m., Avate momentarily separated herself from the commotion. He looked through the door and saw something unusual.
A group of eight people, three women and five men, seemed to be having a heated exchange solely through gestures. No words were said. Their expressions were tense, their hand movements seemed urgent.
A few minutes later, they entered quietly and stood in front of the police station door. Sensing their presence, Avate quickly put an end to the family feud with a stern warning: live in peace or face legal action. The group fell silent and left.
The group of eight remained waiting in total silence. Avate was surprised. He had rarely encountered such silent complaints.
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“Andar aa jao, kya hua (Come in, what happened?)” Avate asked. They hesitated but entered when he waved his hand.
A woman, 34 years old, apparently took a step forward and began gesturing rapidly. Avate froze. He realized that she had hearing and speech problems, like the rest of the group. That explained the silent exchange he witnessed outside.
But he didn’t know sign language.
“For a few seconds, my mind didn’t work… Automatically, I made some gestures like touching my temple with my fingers and waving my hands to tell him that I couldn’t understand what he was saying.”
Sensing his confusion, the woman seemingly paused. One of the men, her husband, motioned to her. He immediately took out a piece of paper from his bag and handed it to Avate.
It was a one-page letter written in English.
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As Avate began reading, the gravity of the situation hit him instantly. The letter alleged that in 2009, the woman had allegedly been raped by a man who mixed a sedative in her drink. She was not his only victim. He claimed he had attacked several other women.
“It didn’t take a split second to understand that this was a serious case,” Avate recalled.
But there was a challenge. “How do I communicate?” he mused out loud. “How could I register a First Information Report (FIR) without understanding their language?”
Almost as if he had read Avate’s mind, one of the men in the group, who seemed to be their leader, made a video call. After signing briefly, he handed the phone to the SI.
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A woman appeared on the screen who introduced herself as Madhu Keni, a social worker who is fluent in sign language. She told Avate that she was on her way to the police station and would help him register the FIR.
Avate then offered water and tea to the group and asked them to sit on a bench.
Around 4 pm Keni arrived.
For the next three hours, police hunkered down to understand what happened 16 years ago. The woman narrated her story and Keni meticulously translated each sign into Marathi. Police videotaped the interaction.
What emerged was a disturbing crime.
Repressed for 16 years
It was July 2009.
The woman was apparently a teenager and lived with her parents.
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One day, apparently a friend invited her to her birthday party and she went with her mother. The next day, the woman said, the friend and another girl allegedly came to her house and asked her to go out with them. His mother agreed but told him to return before it got late, he said in his statement to the police, according to the FIR filed.
They left around noon. Apparently, the three took a car and headed to another nearby house. According to the FIR, the woman asked her friend why she had been taken to someone else’s house, but she said she wanted to introduce her to an acquaintance – Mahesh Pawar.
The woman claimed she initially refused to enter and stood at the door. After much cajoling from her friend, she entered and was introduced to Pawar. She said she was scared, but her friend convinced her that he is a good person and married, the FIR stated.
Meanwhile, Pawar apparently went out to buy samosas and cold drinks for the girls, which they already had.
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After a while, the woman stated that the two girls had to leave. However, the FIR stated, they “insisted” that she stay for a while and promised that they would return.
Shortly thereafter, the woman allegedly said she felt dizzy and collapsed. According to the FIR, she alleged that the accused sexually assaulted her at that time. In and out of consciousness, she said she tried to resist him, but he apparently kept his mouth shut.
The woman alleged that she woke up around 7 pm and saw the accused and the two girls sitting next to her.
The three left Pawar’s house and took a rickshaw back to the woman’s residence. Apparently, the girls went their own way. The woman said she could not walk and a person she knew, who was nearby, helped her reach her house, the FIR stated.
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The next day, the FIR stated, the woman confided in her mother, who allegedly beat her and refused to file a complaint as it would defame her image in the society.
Two days later, the defendant and her friend allegedly met the victim. The FIR stated that Pawar allegedly threatened her, warning her that if she went to the police, he would harm her. Terrified, she was forced to bury the crime.
Pawar and the woman’s friend were booked under sections 376 (rape), 506 (2) (criminal intimidation) and 34 (common intention) of the IPC, police said.
Keni, 65, who worked for over three decades at the Ali Yavar Jung National Institute of Speech and Hearing Disabilities, an autonomous organization in Bandra, said: “The police had several questions… I explained them to the victim and once he understood, he responded in sign language. I then translated those answers in Marathi to the police officer. Such communication, though time-consuming, requires patience and effort.”
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Although he retired five years ago, he continues to work for free with people with hearing and speech disabilities.
But how did the group find out that Pawar was involved in the alleged crimes?
According to the police, the woman and her 33-year-old husband were part of a WhatsApp group comprising 250 hearing- and speech-impaired people in Mumbai. It was a safe space to share experiences and connect socially.
In September 2025, two or three videos allegedly appeared in the group.
And when the woman saw them, police said, her trauma from 17 years ago came rushing back. They were disturbing images of aggression; one video even showed a person allegedly threatened and physically injured.
Police said she also recognized the man in the video: he was her 2009 attacker, Pawar. Gathering her courage, she finally told her husband, who also has hearing and speech problems, about the assault. He supported her, comforted her and promised to help her get justice.
The woman’s husband reportedly discussed the matter with the “leaders” of other WhatsApp groups for the hearing- and speech-impaired. These leaders, according to a police officer, are educated people who can communicate in English.
Some of them suggested contacting Keni. In the first week of October, they met her at Thane railway station, explained the situation to her and asked her to help them as a translator. Keni allegedly agreed, assuring them that he would come to the police station whenever and wherever his services were needed, the police officer said.
The leaders set out to gather evidence, such as videos from the WhatsApp group, and drafted a letter in English detailing the order.
On December 13 last year, the woman, her husband and the others approached the Malad police station.
Police said they alleged that Pawar recorded videos of assaulting the women and then blackmailed them, demanding money and jewellery. If the victims refused, he allegedly threatened to leak the videos on social media, another police officer said.
Police said it now appears that Pawar likely circulated the videos on WhatsApp groups of the hearing-impaired, which is how the woman found them.
Pawar Tracking
At the police station, officers asked the woman’s acquaintances to contact Pawar’s social circle for information about her whereabouts. They soon learned that he had been living in the Virar area for several years. After several inquiries, they got his mobile phone number, but it was switched off.
Around 7 pm on December 13, a team led by Deputy Police Inspector Sanjay Gholave and Sub-Inspector Somnath Jadhav, under the direction of a senior officer, headed to Virar to locate Pawar.
For the next four to five hours, police said, the team followed technical leads while monitoring mobile phone data to determine Pawar’s location. At 11:45 p.m. they made a breakthrough. Pawar turned on his phone and the location of the tower was tracked.
The agents acted with caution. “Before approaching the building where he lived, we asked discreet questions to the neighbours. We came to know that the accused lived on the fourth floor, but he was not at home at the time,” Jadhav said.
They didn’t have to wait long.
At 0.45 a.m. on December 14, with an arrest warrant in hand, the police team knocked on the door of his apartment. A young teenager opened the door. When asked if his father was inside, he said yes, SI Jadhav said. Pawar’s mother and wife were also at home.
The police team, however, was stunned when they discovered that Pawar, as well as his wife, also had hearing problems. The officers explained the case to Pawar’s mother, who translated it to her son.
“At first, the accused pretended to be unaware of the incident, but once we showed him the order and explained the matter to his family, he stopped resisting. We took him to the police station around 2am,” police said.
According to police, Pawar, now 45, grew up in the western suburbs of Mumbai. He studied up to class X. He claimed to be a social worker who helped members of his own community.
“During interrogation, he admitted that he lived somewhere else in Mumbai, where the 2009 crime had allegedly taken place,” a police officer said.
The police later took Pawar to his former residence – a 150 sq ft room. Officers said he claimed the room had been locked since 2012 and was never rented.
He was later sent to judicial custody.
Meanwhile, another police station was informed that the 2009 incident had occurred within its jurisdiction. The case was formally transferred. The woman, along with the rest of her group, Keni and the police, went to this police station where she recounted the incident in sign language.
A police officer from the second police station said there is only one victim so far. “There could be more but… we cannot comment on the case yet.”
Another officer, who is part of the investigation, said: “Women may not want to come forward due to fear and social stigma.”
The police said they found another victim, in her early 20s, who alleged that the accused, Pawar, had sexually assaulted her in 2023. But she refused to give her statement officially and is yet to file a complaint against the accused, the officer said.
According to Keni, for people with hearing disabilities, approaching the police is not only intimidating, but also terrifying. They worry that officers won’t understand sign language, that their statements will be misinterpreted or, worse, ignored.
“Many fear that getting involved in legal proceedings could drag them into protracted court proceedings, putting their jobs and livelihoods at risk,” he said, adding that most hearing-impaired people survive with jobs that pay between Rs 20,000 and Rs 25,000 a month.
There is also a trust issue, he said. “They only trust interpreters they know very well or who have been suggested by close friends or family… They will open up only if they trust the interpreter. If they don’t, they will simply close down.”
This trust factor recently posed a challenge for the police. When Keni was out of town between Dec. 19 and Dec. 29, officers hired another interpreter to re-record the woman’s detailed statement, but she didn’t communicate much. The police then waited for Keni’s return.
The victim’s final statements were recorded on December 31 and lasted almost 10 hours, from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.
“It takes time because not only words are translated; emotions, fears and traumas are also translated,” Keni said.
Meanwhile, police revealed another initial detail: Pawar, they said, is a key witness in the 2024 Pydhonie murder.
Police said the victim in that case, Arshad Shaikh, 30, who had speech and hearing problems, was allegedly murdered by friends, Jai Pravin Chawda and Shivjeet Singh, with similar disabilities. His body was discovered inside a suitcase at Dadar railway station.
The two men were arrested. Police claimed that Shaikh’s wife Rukhsana was also arrested for allegedly plotting the murder with Chawda, with whom he was allegedly having an affair.
Another key accused, Jagpal Preet Kamal Singh alias Jazzy B, a Brussels resident of Indian origin, allegedly instigated the murder over a video call.
“All the people involved in the case are suffering from disability and we have learned that it is a very small community where Jagpal had a lot of followers. But as Shaikh suddenly became popular, Jagpal was jealous of his growing followers, hence it is suspected that he hatched a plan to take him down,” the police had said earlier. “We also obtained footage which revealed that Chawda had made a video call to Jagpal to show him the murder, following which it came to light that he had instigated the entire crime.”
Pawar, police said, was in the same WhatsApp group as the victim and the accused, and was aware of their dispute.
Back at the police station, SI Avate said he wished he could investigate the case.
“It’s different from routine crimes. I wanted to investigate further, but the case was transferred due to a jurisdictional issue,” he said. “…The victim’s friends are still in touch…and often say that it was me who heard the pain of one of their own. They are also seeking updates on the case, especially on bail, fearing reprisals if the accused is released. I have assured them that the Mumbai Police is standing by them and they need not worry.”