Townhall Time, New Delhi
Reporter: Bhavika Kalra
If you walked past the PG in Sector 69, Badshahpur, last week, you wouldn’t have heard a thing. The suspect, a 19-year-old named Shivam from Narela, allegedly used a combination of physical terror and digital surveillance to keep his live-in partner in a state of absolute silence for three harrowing days.
The victim, a student from Tripura who moved to Gurugram to pursue her B.Sc. in Biotechnology at GD Goenka University, is currently in stable but critical recovery at Safdarjung Hospital, New Delhi. The details that emerged over the weekend are nothing short of barbaric.
The Timeline of a Nightmare (Feb 16–19, 2026)
The relationship, which began on a dating app in September 2025, reportedly turned into a “Digital Siege” over the suspect’s baseless suspicions.
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The Captivity: For 72 hours (Feb 16–18), the victim was allegedly held inside their shared room. Her hair was forcibly cut off, and her phone was confiscated.
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The Torture: The FIR states that Shivam used hand sanitizer to set her private parts on fire and assaulted her with a steel bottle and an earthen pot. He allegedly forced her to drink urine and stabbed her legs with a knife to ensure she “would never walk again.”
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The Bengali Code: On the night of February 18, the victim managed to grab Shivam’s phone while he was distracted. She called her mother, a police officer in Tripura, and spoke in Bengali—a language Shivam didn’t understand—to convey her location and the threat to her life.
The Rescue and the ‘Nirbhaya’ Comparison
The victim’s mother didn’t waste a second. She dialed the 112 helplines, bridging the 2,500km gap to Gurugram. Within an hour, Badshahpur police breached the room, rescued the student, and arrested Shivam on the spot.
The victim’s father has publicly compared the brutality to the 2012 Nirbhaya case. The “fear baseline” in the city has moved up another notch, as this wasn’t a crime in a dark alley, but inside a populated PG accommodation.
The Legal Stand: BNS Sections Invoked
This is one of the first high-profile cases being handled entirely under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) in Gurugram.
| Section | Crime Description |
| Section 115 | Voluntarily causing hurt |
| Section 118(1) & (2) | Causing grievous hurt by dangerous weapons/means |
| Section 127(2) | Wrongful confinement |
| Section 69 | Sexual intercourse by deceitful means (pretext of marriage) |
| Section 351(2) | Criminal intimidation |
The victim’s lawyer, Reena Rai, is already pushing for Attempted Murder charges to be formally added. While the police initially cited minor injuries, the medical reports from AIIMS and Safdarjung have confirmed the severity of the burns and the physical trauma.
The ‘Live-In’ Legal Vacuum in 2026
This case has reignited a fierce debate in the Delhi-NCR region. Gurugram, a corporate hub, hosts thousands of students living independently. The “urban anonymity” of PGs allowed this abuse to go unnoticed by neighbors for three days.
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Background Checks: There is a growing demand for mandatory “Partner Verification” or at least stricter PG management protocols.
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Psychological Toll: Beyond the physical scars, experts are pointing to the long-term PTSD for survivors of “captivity-style” abuse.
The Bottom Line
As of this evening, February 23, 2026, Shivam is behind bars. The victim has been declared “stable” but the road to recovery—both physical and psychological—is long. The police are now scanning the “nude videos” the accused allegedly recorded for blackmail, which will likely add IT Act charges to the case.
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