'Quack inserted bullet in chest for Rs 2.5k': Woman fakes kidnapping, rape and gunshot wound to frame Bareilly mayor

MEERUT: A woman in Bareilly staged her own kidnapping, gang rape, and gunshot wound to falsely implicate the city's mayor and his son , police said, after CCTV footage and medical evidence revealed the bullet in her chest had been surgically implanted and not fired.
Officers said she had been dismissed as domestic help by the mayor's wife in 2021 and may have been motivated by personal grievance or political pressure.
The woman, 40, arrived at a Bareilly hospital on March 29 with a bullet lodged in her chest and a story so severe it required no embellishment. Five men, she claimed, had abducted her in plain public view, raped her in a moving car, shot her, and left her for dead.
At the centre of her allegation were two names: Bareilly mayor Dr Umesh Gautam and his son, Parth Gautam. What followed in the next few days was not a criminal case unfolding but an elaborate deception.
She told police she had gone to a 300-bed hospital to collect medicine when a car pulled up and she was taken. Her account continued: she was sexually assaulted by five men while they drove, one of them got a call from Parth, and she heard him say, "Finish her. She's creating problems for my father." She said she was shot and thrown out of the vehicle.
That version of events began to disintegrate as investigators compared her words with surveillance footage. "We checked the CCTV and found that she arrived at the hospital in an auto-rickshaw," said SSP Anurag Arya. "There was no abduction." No gunpowder residue was found at the site she pointed to as the place she was shot. And the bullet in her chest? It had never been fired.
The woman had approached a hospital staffer, Rohatash, and asked him to help her obtain a bullet. When questioned by police, he said he had done just that. The woman then travelled to Hajipur in search of someone to insert it into her body. Eventually, she found a local quack, Sharif Khan, who agreed to her request for a sum of Rs 2,500.
"He numbed her skin then heated a coin to sterilise the area and inserted the bullet just below the surface," said Arya. "There was no surgical depth, it was superficial." Medical officers later confirmed this to investigators during her examination. Once confronted with the findings -the video, absence of gunpowder, the medical report - she "admitted to staging everything," Arya said.
This wasn't the first time she had named the mayor. In 2022, she made a similar complaint that also collapsed under investigation. At the time, she withdrew her statement and the case was closed.
The woman was arrested last week with Rohatash and Sharif Khan. Police are looking for four others believed to be linked to the staging of the incident.