On the evening of Thursday, November 14, 2024, a 19-year-old student was walking home from her tuition classes in Valsad district, in southern Gujarat. Her route took her near the railway tracks close to Udvada station. Police said she was attacked from behind. Her body was found that day near the tracks. She had been raped and strangled.
Ten days later, on the night of Sunday, November 24, local police and railway police picked up a man in the parking lot of Vapi railway station, a short distance down the line. They named him as Rahul Jat, of Rohtak in Haryana. When the Valsad Superintendent of Police, Karanraj Vaghela, announced the arrest the next day, he said the case was larger than one killing. "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," he told the Press Trust of India. A week later the count had risen to six.
Rahul Jat has been convicted of none of these killings, and no trial or verdict has been reported. Everything said about the other cases comes from police statements, most of them made in the two weeks after his arrest, and from what police said he told them in custody. He stands accused, and nothing more.
The reports agree that he came from Rohtak, in Haryana. They do not agree on his full name. The Press Trust of India called him Rahul Jat. The Week called him Rahul Karamveer Jat. The news agencies ANI and IANS, and the Hindi channel Aaj Tak, used Rahul Singh Jat. ThePrint, which spoke to Valsad police officers at length, gave the fullest version: Rahul alias Bholu Karamvir Ishwar Jat. IANS also used the nickname Bholu.
Most reports gave his age as 29 at the time of his arrest; The Week said 30. According to The Week, he contracted polio when he was five. A Valsad Deputy Superintendent of Police, A.K. Varma, described the result to ThePrint: "His one leg is a little shorter than the other, but he can walk around." Aaj Tak reported that he had studied only to the fifth grade, that police said he had been stealing since childhood, and that his family had cut ties with him because of his behavior. ThePrint reported that his family did confirm one thing for the police after his arrest: the condition of his leg, which helped them establish who he was.
Nothing more about his early life appears in the reports. They do not quote his family directly, describe his parents, or say where in Rohtak district he grew up.
By the time the Udvada case began, Jat was already well known to police in northern and western India. The numbers vary. PTI, quoting SP Vaghela, said more than a dozen cases were registered against him in Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. IANS put it at more than thirteen cases, involving robbery, dacoity (armed robbery by a group), rape and murder, across several states. ThePrint said at least 11 earlier criminal cases, including theft and arms smuggling.
According to PTI, 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. ThePrint reported that he had spent 22 months in jail in all between 2018 and 2024. The Week said police in Jodhpur, in Rajasthan, had first arrested him in 2018 or 2019 for theft.
All the reports say he was out on bail when the killings police now attribute to him began. They differ on when he was released. ANI, as carried by Gulf News, reported that he had been released from jail in Jodhpur on November 15 and quoted SP Vaghela as saying "he revealed that he had committed a total of five murders after being released from the Jodhpur jail." That date cannot be right as given, because the Udvada killing happened on November 14 and police place other killings in October. An Indian news site, India Herald, reported that he was released on bond in May 2024. Police later linked him to a killing on June 8, 2024. The reports do not settle the question.
DySP Varma described the way of life police said he had settled into: "He is a drug addict and keeps travelling on trains, looting people for daily needs." Police told PTI that he had no fixed place to stay and mostly slept on station platforms and in trains. According to SP Vaghela, he had also worked at a hotel in the Valsad area and had been to Surat, Valsad and Vapi four or five times in the year before his arrest.
Police said Jat robbed people whenever he found them alone, and that he assaulted women, especially in the coaches reserved for passengers with disabilities. Indian trains carry these coaches, often called divyang coaches, and ThePrint reported that he used the seats set aside for passengers with disabilities. IANS reported that police said he often traveled on trains without paying.
That way of moving was, in the police account, the reason he was hard to catch. "Jat travelled extensively and kept changing his location," Vaghela told PTI. The Week said police believed sleeping in stations and on trains had kept him from being identified.
What follows is the list of killings police attributed to Jat by early December 2024, in the order police placed them. They are allegations. Several of the reports disagree about places, dates and ages, and those disagreements are noted where they arise.
The earliest killing police linked to him was the last one they announced. On December 3, 2024, more than a week after the arrest, SP Vaghela said Jat had confessed to a sixth murder. "He has now confessed to a sixth murder, of a visually-challenged youth," Vaghela told PTI. "With this, we have succeeded in cracking one more undetected murder."
The young man was Fayaz Ahmed Sheikh, from Nandurbar, in Maharashtra, and he was visually impaired. According to the police account, Jat met him on a train journey from Pratapnagar, in Vadodara, on June 8, 2024, and befriended him. The two got off the train at Dabhoi, in Vadodara district. Police said Jat took Sheikh to an isolated spot, strangled him with an iron chain, and took his mobile phone and his money. Until December the case had been on police books as an undetected murder.
The reports give no further details about Fayaz Ahmed Sheikh: not his age, his family, or why he was traveling. If police account for Jat's release correctly, this killing is also the one that conflicts with ANI's report of a November release from jail.
PTI reported that in October 2024 Jat raped and killed a woman on a train near Solapur railway station, in Maharashtra. Aaj Tak placed this killing between October 17 and 21, on a train running from Pune to Kanyakumari. ANI, quoting SP Vaghela, said one of the killings Jat had admitted was on the Pune-Kanyakumari Express, and that the woman killed there had not yet been identified.
ThePrint's list, compiled from Valsad police, did not mention Solapur. It gave instead the rape and murder of a 53-year-old woman at Gooty, in Andhra Pradesh, on October 20. IANS listed among the complaints against Jat a case at "Guti railway station" in Andhra Pradesh, where a woman had been found dead on a train. These may be two descriptions of the same case, a woman killed on a southbound train and found or recorded at a later station, but none of the sources says so, and the question remains open. None of the reports names her.
On the morning of Friday, October 25, 2024, a railway guard found a man unconscious in the divyang coach of a train that had left Yesvantpur, in Bengaluru, the day before, bound for Murudeshwar on the Karnataka coast. Railway police took him to a hospital in Udupi, where doctors declared him dead. The case was handed to the police station at Mulki, near Mangaluru.
He had no identity papers. Police shared the label sewn into his shirt collar, "RS Tailor Chickpete," on WhatsApp groups, and that is how his family was found. Deccan Herald gave his name as Mouzzan, a 35-year-old sales representative from Kumbarpete, Doddaballapur. Udayavani gave it as Mouzam, 35, son of Ameer Khan, from Kumarapete in Chikkaballapur district. The Week, after Jat's arrest, called him Mauzaam, a resident of Chikkaballapur.
When relatives arrived in Udupi to identify him, they saw marks on his neck that suggested strangulation. His uncle, Arif Ullah Khan, filed a complaint. His bag and mobile phone were missing. The phone's last signal had come from a tower near Sakleshpur, in the hills on the route west from Bengaluru. Mulki police inspector Vidhyadhar Bykerikar registered a case. "The police suspect that he might have been murdered for gain," Deccan Herald reported on October 28, and officers were searching in Mysuru and Bengaluru.
A month later, Gujarat police said this was one of Jat's killings. According to The Week, police said he strangled the man after an argument and left with his phone, his bag and his cash. ThePrint listed it as the killing of a 35-year-old man in Bengaluru on October 25. Aaj Tak described a passenger strangled on October 25 in a coach reserved for passengers with disabilities. IANS listed Mulki police station among those with complaints against him.
The young woman killed near Udvada is the only victim in the case whose death has been formally tied to Jat by an arrest. Her name has not appeared in any report.
The sources describe her slightly differently. PTI and Deccan Herald called her a 19-year-old college student. India Herald said she was a second-year B.Com student from Pardi taluka. IANS called her a 12th-class student and placed the attack in the Motiwada area of Valsad. News24 described her as a woman from Vapi. All agree that she was 19, that she was on her way home from tuition in the evening, and that her body was found on November 14 near the railway tracks close to Udvada station.
ThePrint reported what police said Jat told them about why he attacked her. According to police, he believed she was laughing at him when she was smiling at her phone. He is accused of strangling and raping her. The Week reported that police said he dragged her into a mango orchard near the station. Police told Aaj Tak and India Herald that he had also assaulted her body afterward. News24 reported that he fled after a crowd gathered, leaving his belongings behind.
What he left behind was the start of the case against him. Near the body, police found a backpack. ThePrint, citing police, listed its contents as a sweater, four shirts, two pairs of shorts and some snacks; The Week described one set of clothes and a mobile phone charger. To investigators, it looked like the bag of someone who was passing through and had probably come by train. SP Vaghela told Aaj Tak that the bag and a T-shirt left at the scene were the most important clues they had.
According to the police account given to PTI, Jat had come to the area this time to collect wages owed to him by a hotel where he had worked. ThePrint reported that in custody he had told them that, and other versions as well.
Five days after the Udvada killing, on November 19, an elderly man was stabbed to death on the Katihar Express near Howrah station, in West Bengal. A case was registered at the Howrah police station. News Karnataka gave his age as 60 and The Week as 60; ThePrint said 63. ThePrint described the train as a Howrah-Kanyakumari service, while PTI, The Week and News Karnataka called it the Katihar Express.
According to ThePrint, Jat told police he killed the man because the man would not share a beedi, a hand-rolled cigarette. The Week reported the same confession as an argument over a cigarette. Aaj Tak said police described it as a robbery. The man himself has not been named.
The last killing in the police list happened, PTI reported, the day before Jat's arrest: a woman robbed and killed on a train near Secunderabad railway station, in Telangana. ThePrint gave her age as 46 and the date as November 24, and said that whether she had been raped had not been established. Aaj Tak placed it between November 21 and 24. IANS listed a complaint at Secunderabad police station.
The Week described what may be the same case differently, as the killing of a Telugu woman near Yadagirigutta railway station. The reports do not say whether this is the same woman. Her name was not reported.
If PTI's timing is right, the woman near Secunderabad was killed while Gujarat police were already searching for the man from the Udvada footage, and Jat was arrested in Vapi, back in Valsad district, the next night.
The Valsad investigation, as police described it afterward, combined the backpack, the railway network and a very large number of cameras.
PTI reported that investigators went through footage from about 2,000 CCTV cameras in Vapi, Valsad, Surat and Udvada. The Week put the number at 5,000 cameras at stations across Gujarat and Maharashtra. IANS said Valsad police traced his route by train from Valsad toward Andhra Pradesh. Police formed an investigation team and alerted stations along the line, The Week reported, and footage showed the suspect eating at a station after the attack. Vaghela told PTI that police units from several states were drawn into what he called "a massive search."
One clip finally gave investigators a clear picture of the man's face. According to PTI, an official at Lajpore central jail in Surat looked at it and recognized him as Rahul Jat. ThePrint reported that the face in the footage was an 80 percent match, and that jail records from Jodhpur and his family's confirmation of his leg completed the identification. India Herald reported that the records came from the prison system's e-prison database, which held his photograph and family details. ANI said investigators had traced him through his earlier arrest by Jodhpur police.
PTI reported that Jat was detained on the night of Sunday, November 24, in the parking area of Vapi railway station, in a joint operation by the local police and the railway police. ANI, via Gulf News, said police found him on a train to Vapi and arrested him there. According to The Week, he was wearing the same clothes seen in the footage from near the crime scene. ThePrint gave the arrest date as November 26; the earlier reports, including PTI's of November 25, show that he was in custody by then.
IANS and ANI reported that a court remanded him to police custody for 10 days, and that a Special Investigation Team was formed to look into the Valsad case and the cases in other states. Police told IANS they had informed the other states and gone back to the scene of the Udvada killing with him.
Police said Jat confessed during questioning. What he confessed to, and how firmly, shifted from report to report.
On November 25, Vaghela spoke of at least four other cases. ANI quoted him as saying Jat admitted five murders in West Bengal, Karnataka, Telangana and Gujarat. IANS reported that he told police he had committed five murders in the previous 25 days. By December 3, the police count stood at six, with the addition of the Dabhoi killing from June.
ThePrint, reporting on November 28, described a man who was not easy to pin down. "He does not give a fixed answer," a senior officer said. Another said: "He understands how police officers work. So, he knows how to misguide investigators." According to ThePrint, he had admitted the killings without giving key details, had given shifting accounts of why he was in Gujarat, and police were checking his statements against CCTV footage and phone records.
None of these confessions has been tested by cross-examination or by a judge, and none of the other states' cases had been reported as formally connected to him by a separate arrest or charge.
Proven in court: nothing. No trial or verdict has been reported.
Accused, with an arrest: the rape and murder of the 19-year-old student near Udvada on November 14, 2024. The evidence police described publicly was the backpack left at the scene, CCTV footage, the identification by the Surat jail official and the jail records, and his statements in custody.
Alleged by police, on the basis of his reported confessions and their own inquiries: the killings of Fayaz Ahmed Sheikh at Dabhoi in June 2024; a woman on the Pune-Kanyakumari train in October 2024; Mouzzan on the Bengaluru-Murudeshwar train on October 25; an elderly man on the Katihar Express on November 19; and a woman near Secunderabad on November 24.
Disputed or unclear in the reports:
The October killing of a woman is placed near Solapur in Maharashtra by PTI and Aaj Tak, and at Gooty in Andhra Pradesh by ThePrint and IANS. These may be the same case.
The Secunderabad killing may or may not be the same as the "Telugu woman near Yadagirigutta" in The Week.
The ages of the man on the Katihar Express (60 or 63) and the train's route.
Jat's age (29 or 30), his full name, the arrest date (November 24 or 26), and the date he was released on bail (May or November 2024, or another date).
The count of earlier cases against him (11, more than a dozen, more than thirteen).
PTI said police linked him to rapes of women in the disabled coaches generally. Apart from the Udvada case and the October killing, the reports do not identify any other rape police attribute to him, and ThePrint said rape was unconfirmed in the Secunderabad case.
Several of the most widely repeated details, including the motive in the Udvada case and the beedi in the Howrah case, come only from what police said Jat told them.
On December 3, 2024, PTI reported that Jat was in the custody of Valsad police, that the investigation was continuing, and that police in Gujarat were working with forces in other states.
By October 2026, no chargesheet, framing of charges, trial, verdict or bail order in his name had surfaced in news reports or in the Indian Kanoon database of court orders. That silence does not prove the case has stood still since December 2024. On the public record, Rahul Jat is an accused man awaiting the outcome of investigations in at least five states.
Most of the people police say Jat killed have not been named in public. The young woman at Udvada is unnamed in the reports, and the reports say almost nothing about her beyond her age, her studies and the walk home from her classes. The woman on the October train was, according to ANI, still unidentified in late November. The man on the Katihar Express and the woman near Secunderabad were described only by age.
Two have names. Fayaz Ahmed Sheikh was a visually impaired young man from Nandurbar who, in the police account, accepted the friendship of a stranger on a train. Mouzzan was a 35-year-old salesman who boarded a train at Yesvantpur on an October evening and was found the next morning in the coach reserved for passengers with disabilities. His family learned what had happened to him because a tailor's label in his collar was passed around on WhatsApp.
2018-2019: Jat is jailed in Rajasthan, according to police; Jodhpur police arrest him for theft.
2024: Jailed again on cases involving truck theft and arms smuggling; released on bail, with the date given variously as May or November.
June 8, 2024: Fayaz Ahmed Sheikh is killed at Dabhoi, Vadodara district (police allegation, announced December 3).
October 17-21, 2024: A woman is raped and killed on a Pune-Kanyakumari train, near Solapur or Gooty (police allegation; ThePrint gives October 20).
October 24-25, 2024: Mouzzan, 35, is found dead in the divyang coach of a Bengaluru-Murudeshwar train near Mulki, Karnataka.
October 28, 2024: Karnataka papers report that Mulki police suspect murder for gain.
November 14, 2024: A 19-year-old student is raped and killed near Udvada station, Valsad district, Gujarat. A backpack is found near her body.
November 19, 2024: An elderly man is stabbed to death on the Katihar Express near Howrah, West Bengal (police allegation).
November 24, 2024: A woman is killed on a train near Secunderabad, Telangana (police allegation). That night Jat is detained at Vapi railway station.
November 25, 2024: SP Karanraj Vaghela announces the arrest and links Jat to at least four other cases.
Late November 2024: A court remands Jat to 10 days of police custody; a Special Investigation Team is formed.
December 3, 2024: Police say Jat has confessed to a sixth killing, of Fayaz Ahmed Sheikh.
As of the December 3, 2024 PTI report: accused, in police custody, investigation continuing.