How A Woman Found Her Daughter’s ‘Dead’ Rapist

A woman from a remote village in Bihar tracked down her daughter’s rapist after he was declared dead leading to the closure of the case. The rape convict, Niraj Modi, has been sentenced to 14 years of imprisonment for raping a minor girl and his father to seven years for forgery, cheating, and dishonesty.

The Rape Case

Modi, a 39-year-old man who was a school teacher at a government school, was accused of raping his 12-year-old student, a minor girl, in October 2018. The girl was attacked while she was by herself in a sugarcane field, and her assailant threatened to post a video of the assault online to keep her silent.

Soon after a complaint was lodged by the survivor’s mother, and Modi was arrested. But, he was out on bail after merely two months in prison.

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The Rapist Faked Death

In February 2022, Modi’s father Rajaram Modi, who is over 60 years old and works as a farmer, travelled to a court nearly 100km (62 miles) away from the village, with a lawyer to claim that his son died on February 27, 2022, at their village home. In order to get a death certificate issued, he provided two pictures from the cremation, receipts of the firewood bought for the ritual as evidence, signatures and the unique biometric identity number of five villagers as per Indian laws. However, as per a 54-year-old law, the authorities didn’t question the cause of death.

Two months after this, the local authorities issued a death certificate and the court closed the case in May 2022 as the “only accused in the case” was dead.

However convinced that this was a forgery, the girl’s mother was the only person who suspected that the teacher had faked his death.

How The Mother Tracked Down Her 12-Year-Old Daughter’s “Dead” Rapist

"The moment I came to know that Niraj Modi was dead, I knew it was a lie. I knew he was alive," said the mother, in an interaction with BBC.

Since villages in India are usually densely populated and have closely-knit communities, everyone knows everyone and news of death doesn’t go unheard, as per the survivor’s lawyer. Hence, the question arose on how no one knew of Modi’s death. "But how come nobody knew of the teacher's death? Why were no rites held after the death? Why was there no talk about the death?" she questioned.

The mother said that she went from one home to another in order to enquire if Modi was really dead and not to her surprise, nobody had heard of the news. Following which, she went to the court urging an investigation into the matter.

In May 2022, she also wrote a petition to the local official claiming that the death certificate was issued based on forged documents and it needs to be investigated. Soon, investigation began and the authorities demanded more and fresh evidence from Modi’s family regarding his death including photos of the "deceased after his death, of the cremation, of the burning pyre, the last rites and [fresh] testimony of five witnesses".

As a part of the investigation, members of the village council met the inhabitants of the 250 families in the village. It appeared that no one was aware of Modi's death. Hindus often only shave their heads as a sign of mourning if a close relative passes away. However, none of the Modi family members had done so. In fact, Modi’s own relatives did not have the information regarding his death.

After Rajaram failed to provide fresh evidence of Niraj’s death, he was questioned by the investigative office again. "When we asked him more questions, he didn't give any satisfactory answer," said Dharmendra Kumar, the secretary of the council.

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Following the investigation, it was confirmed that Modi’s death was faked. The officers found that the teacher had falsified the signatures of the parents of five of his students' parents on a document requesting his own death certificate. He informed the parents that in order to set up the students' scholarships, he would need their biometric identity numbers.

The officials, then, cancelled Niraj Modi’s death certificate and charged his father with forgery and in July 2022, the case was reopened.

The mother’s relentless battle to track down her daughter’s “dead” rapist came to an end finally and in October he was convicted for his crimes.