A studious girl with a quick smile considered to be like any other fresher at the MGM Medical College canteen in Indore turned out to be an undercover cop there to solve a ragging case.

She had an easy time making acquaintances, from the canteen boys to the students who hung around over tea and chit-chat. Nobody mistook her for anything else than a young medical student or nurse. Nobody suspected the affable newcomer was a keen-eyed policewoman on her first major job.

Shalini Chouhan, a 24-year-old undercover detective, obtained enough information to solve a blind case that had evaded investigators for almost five months. She assisted in the identification of 11 seniors accused of ragging a group of first-year MBBS students in July of this year.  

She dressed like a nurse, wearing jeans and a top and carrying a backpack full of books, despite the fact that she is a business graduate. This connected her well with the other students and she managed to befriend them and crack the case that evaded police investigation for months.

She used to spend five to six hours a day at the canteen, at intervals to make it appear as though she was working and not simply hanging out there and talking to everyone. We gradually identified the seniors who were berating the freshmen.

No one realised for weeks that she had nothing to do with medicine with her smile disarming the very suspects she was looking into.

This was a completely blind case. The police received an anonymous complaint containing screenshots of WhatsApp chats between seniors and juniors, as well as locations (of flats) given by the seniors where the juniors were called for ragging.

According to investigators, the accused pupils coerced juniors to perform lewd activities. It would have been difficult to identify them without the undercover op.

Nine of the 11 accused are from MP, with one each from Bengal and Bihar. They were taken aback when they were summoned to the Sanyogitaganj police station on Thursday and given notices.