In an operation which seems to be lifted straight from movies, a woman constable in Madhya Pradesh police, acted as a college student to crack a ragging case at Indore’s Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Medical College.

Shalini Chouhan, the 24-year-old cop attired as a college student, carrying a bag and books, spent time in the canteen and chatted with others, all with the aim of gathering vital evidence in the case.

This act she carried on for more than three months and finally was able to track down the 11 students who were involved in the brutal ragging of students of first year. Due to her efforts, these seniors have been identified and suspended from the institution and hostel for three months.

It was on basis of complaints received from the first-year students that they were made to do obscene acts, that police decided to act. On making enquiries in the campus, they found that students were scared and did not want to come forward fearing harassment.

Adhering to good old policing procedure, police decided to deploy Shalini and other staff on the campus in plain clothes to speak to students in the canteen and eating outlets to elicit information. In the process they were able to come to know about the ragging incidents and also identify witnesses.

For Shalini it was a completely new experience to go to the college disguised as a student. She cleverly managed to evade inconvenient questions about her by the students to ward off suspicion on her.