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Gujarat Police Arrest Haryana Man in Valsad Rape and Murder, Link Him to Killings on Trains

Police said Rahul Jat, held at Vapi railway station, raped and murdered a 19-year-old near Udvada and was involved in at least four killings on trains in four other states.

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Illustration: task-force briefing room with officers seated facing a screen, seen from the back

The 19-year-old was walking home from her tuition classes on the evening of November 14, 2024, when she was attacked from behind near the railway tracks close to Udvada station, in Gujarat's Valsad district, raped and murdered. Eleven days later, on November 25, police announced that they had arrested the man they believed killed her, and that in their account he was responsible for far more.

Superintendent of Police Karanraj Vaghela said Rahul Jat, a native of Rohtak in Haryana, was picked up in the parking lot of Vapi railway station on Sunday night, November 24, in a joint operation by local and railway police. "We have found that he is involved in at least four cases of loot and murder on trains and at railway stations in Karnataka, West Bengal, Telangana and Maharashtra," Vaghela said. By the SP's account, Jat had robbed and killed a woman on a train near Secunderabad railway station only a day before his arrest. In October, Vaghela said, he raped and murdered a woman on a train near Solapur railway station; he stabbed an elderly man to death on the Katihar Express near Howrah; and he was accused of killing a train passenger at Mulki, in Karnataka. None of those accusations had been tested in court.

Catching him had been hard, the SP said, because Jat never stayed put. He traveled constantly and mostly slept on station platforms and in trains. The search drew in police units from several states and footage from 2,000 CCTV cameras in Vapi, Valsad, Surat and Udvada. One clip finally gave investigators a clear picture of the suspect, and an official at Surat's Lajpore central jail recognized him as Rahul Jat. According to Vaghela, Jat had been to Surat, Valsad and Vapi four or five times in the past year, and this time he had come to collect his pay from a hotel where he had worked. It was during that visit, police said, that the young woman was killed.

He was no stranger to police. Vaghela said more than a dozen cases were registered against him in Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, and police said he had been jailed in 2018 and 2019 and again in 2024 in cases involving truck theft and illegal arms smuggling in Rajasthan, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand. Police described a man who robbed people whenever he found them alone and raped women, especially in the coaches set aside for passengers with disabilities.

Accounts of the arrest do not agree on every point. Speaking to ANI, Vaghela gave the suspect's name as Rahul Singh Jat, 29, said investigators had traced him through an earlier arrest by police in Jodhpur, and said that under questioning Jat admitted five murders in West Bengal, Karnataka, Telangana and Gujarat, the most recent on the Pune-Kanyakumari Express, where the victim had not yet been identified. The Press Trust of India, quoting the same officer, placed the four other killings in Karnataka, West Bengal, Telangana and Maharashtra.

Sources