The four men had been drinking whiskey near the Tollgate all evening. They spotted her scooter parked there, a regular sight, and they watched her climb into the taxi and head toward her dermatologist appointment. It wasn’t the first time they’d seen her. While she was gone, they deflated one of her tires.
At 9:15 p. m. , she returned and found her scooter flat. She was on the phone with her sister, asking for help, when the men approached and offered their assistance.
She didn’t know them. She didn’t know why they were being kind. They ambushed her. When she screamed, they covered her mouth and dragged her into the bushes near the toll plaza.
They switched off her phone. They poured whiskey into her mouth, trying to silence her, and it didn’t work. They tore off her clothes and took turns assaulting her until she lost consciousness. When she stirred, they carried her to their parked truck.
They smothered her. Some reports say she was strangled. At 2:30 a. m.
, they wrapped her body in a blanket and loaded her into the back of the truck. They drove 27 kilometers to a remote stretch of the Hyderabad-Bangalore Highway. Beneath an underpass, they dumped her like trash. They doused her in diesel and petrol and set her on fire.
Her charred remains weren’t discovered until the next day. Seventy percent of her body had been burned. Her name wasn’t reported to the public because Indian law doesn’t allow it. Police and media dubbed her “Disha” and “Hyderabad Nirbhaya.
” She was born in 1994. She loved animals, graduated from veterinary college, and worked as an assistant surgeon at a state-run hospital near the village of Ker. She was 25 years old. Her scooter was found about 10 kilometers from the crime scene.
Her clothing, handbag, and spent liquor bottles were recovered near the toll plaza. CCTV cameras caught the attack. Her cell phone held evidence. The four men were quickly arrested: Muhammad Arif, Chinta Chennakeshulu, Jalo Shiva, and Jalo Naveen.
They were taken to Cherlapally Central Jail. The Chief Minister ordered a fast-track trial. Then it went wrong. On December 6, 2019, between 3 a.
m. and 6:30 a. m. , all four suspects were shot dead by police.
Police said the men had been taken back to the underpass to reconstruct the crime scene. According to the official story, two of the suspects snatched officers’ service weapons and attacked them, forcing police to open fire in self-defense. The families of the accused called it a “fake encounter. ” The accused were not random strangers, but someone’s sons.
Their fathers and mothers came forward, asking for financial help and demanding that the ten officers involved be punished. The men’s bodies were autopsied twice. The second examination on December 21, 2019, was conducted by forensic experts from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi. In 2022, an inquiry commission appointed by the Supreme Court delivered its findings: the four men were shot with a deliberate intention to cause their deaths.
The police story about snatching weapons was a “concocted story. ” The commission recommended that the ten police officers be tried for murder and noted that at least three of the four dead men may have been minors. The case was transferred to the Telangana High Court. As of early 2025, it still hasn’t been resolved.
The aftermath overshadowed Disa’s story. Newspapers and news shows focused on the encounter, the inquiry, and the fate of the officers. Articles about Disa herself were harder to find. There were dozens of pieces about what happened to her killers, but very little about who she was, what she dreamed of, or what she lost.
Her father told reporters that his daughter’s soul would finally attain peace. He said, “I want to congratulate the government of Telangana, the police, and the people who have been supporting me. ”
Her sister said, “The accused have been encountered and I feel very happy. ” She hoped it would deter others from committing such heinous acts.
Disha’s case echoed the 2012 Delhi gang rape of Jyoti Singh, known as Nirbhaya. In December 2012, Jyoti and her friend boarded a private bus in Delhi. She was 22, a medical student, the only daughter of parents who had sold farmland to pay for her education. Six men attacked her friend first, knocking him unconscious with an iron rod.
Then they turned on Jyoti. They dragged her by her hair, beat her, and took turns raping her. When she fought back, biting them, they forced the L-shaped rod inside her, puncturing her uterus and bowels. Her intestines spilled out of her body.
The attack lasted almost an hour. Then they threw both victims off the bus, half-dressed, onto the side of the road. A highway patrol van found them. Jyoti was placed on a ventilator at Safdarjung Hospital.
Only five percent of her intestines remained. She scrawled a note for her doctors: “I want to survive. ”
She told police everything. The conductor closed the doors, switched off the lights, and came toward her friend.
They tore off her clothes and raped her in turns, hitting her with an iron rod and biting her across her whole body. The bus driver kept changing so he could rape her too. She survived five surgeries, but her body couldn’t withstand the internal bleeding and sepsis. On a flight to Singapore for specialist care, she went into cardiac arrest.
She died on December 26, 2012. You would think things would have changed after that. They didn’t. Cases keep going unreported.
In Rajasthan, a six-year-old girl was raped and strangled with her own belt by a drunken 38-year-old man who lured her out of her school with candy. He killed her so she couldn’t identify him. In Kerala, a 40-year-old woman was raped and killed with a gardening tool. A 28-year-old man was arrested.
In Ranchi, twelve men attacked a 25-year-old woman because she was sitting with a male friend. They incapacitated her companion first, then dragged her away and took turns assaulting her. In March 2024, two travel bloggers from Spain and Brazil were attacked while documenting their journey through India and Nepal. They told their followers: “Something happened to us that we wouldn’t wish on anyone.
We were assaulted in the tent, beaten, they put a knife to our necks, and she was raped by seven guys. ” Four suspects were apprehended. It’s unclear if the other three were ever brought to justice. Ranana Kumari, director of the Centre for Social Research, told CNN: “It is in the mind of society and men and boys to brutalize women.
They get a power kick. If law and order and enforcement is strong, then the law starts acting as a deterrent. The politicians make obnoxious statements. They help in creating the culture.
The law is not acting as a deterrent. ”
According to 2021 figures from the National Crime Records Bureau, 31,677 cases of rape were reported across India. That’s roughly 87 women attacked every day. The real number is likely far higher because of the stigma and shame attached to the crime.
Some victims are murdered by their own families in “honor killings. ” Many attacks are simply never reported. A prime example: in Delhi in 2012, there were 706 reported rapes. Only one case ended in a successful conviction.
That was Jyoti Singh’s. I came across something else during my research. Something I never thought I’d write about. In April 2022, four men were arrested for the gang rape of an endangered Bengal monitor lizard.
Yes. A lizard. The incident took place on March 29, 2022, in the Sahyadri Tiger Reserve. Forest rangers thought they were investigating poaching when they spotted the four men on cameras meant to track tigers.
The men, armed with a rifle, were arrested for trespassing. Then police found photos and video on their phones. The men had taken turns assaulting the lizard before killing and eating it. Forest officer Vishal Mali told Vice News: “I have never seen a crime like this before.
The men are in their twenties and thirties and they appear to have done it for fun. There was no religious or black magic agenda. ”
He added: “Not only is this cruel but there is a risk of zoonotic diseases from this kind of case. There are concerns of men carrying STDs and other infections from their act.
”
Their crime carried a maximum seven-year sentence. The men were bailed out, and I haven’t been able to find out what happened with the case since. It wasn’t the only one. A man raped and killed a pregnant goat in southern India.
Another 60-year-old man was caught assaulting a stray dog. In July 2020, a group of seven teenage boys in Lahore, Pakistan, passed around a kitten for over a week until it died of multiple organ failure. The assault was so brutal the kitten’s private parts became one opening. In November 2023, a man in Dahanu, India, raped his landlady’s cat.
He was arrested, and the cat survived. Between 2010 and 2020, there were an estimated half a million reported crimes against animals in India: torture, killing, and in 82 cases, rape. Again, those are just the ones that were reported. This isn’t only a South Asian problem.
Between 2016 and 2022, around 370 arrests related to the assault of animals were reported in the United States, the highest figure since 1975. Many took place in rural areas, mostly against domestic animals, but wildlife fell victim too. The state of West Virginia still doesn’t have laws protecting animals from these crimes. I’m a woman.
I have a fierce love for animals. Hearing all this, I feel utterly powerless. Disha was a person. A vet who loved animals, who worked for a living, who was on her way to a routine appointment on a night that ended with her being burned under a highway underpass.
Her name never became a headline. Her life got buried beneath the story of her killers’ deaths. I can’t help but wonder: what are we doing wrong that this keeps happening, again and again, and again?
