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More than 25 years ago, in the winter of 1997, a gruesome murder took place in Southeast Delhi’s Tughlakabad. Kishan Lal, a 32-year-old sweeper, was stabbed several times near his house. A neighbour, Ramu, was accused in the case registered at Okhla Police Station. However, with the police unable to trace Ramu, and the Patiala House court declaring him an absconder, the case went cold.
Over two decades later, in August 2021, the Delhi Police’s North district relaunched investigation into the case. The year after, in September, a three-member police team in the garb of insurance agents managed to trace Ramu: He had started a new life as Ashok Yadav and was making a living renting out e-rickshaws.
A senior police officer privy to the probe said, “We got a tip-off that the accused’s nephew, Shivakar, 26, used to live in Uttam Nagar. We learnt from a lawyer that Shivakar’s parents and sister had passed away in a road accident in 1998 and that he had been claiming insurance money for the same for many years …posing as insurance agents, a three-member police team in civilian clothes told Shivakar that they would help him get the insurance amount and asked for the names and contact details of his relatives as witnesses.”
The officer said that the cops eventually stumbled upon the number of Aakash, the son of Ramu, which was traced to UP’s Farrukhabad. “Aakash had, however, changed his mobile number. Following this, we traced him through his Facebook account to Kapoorthla neighbourhood of Lucknow. During interrogation, he told us that he had lost touch with his father and had not seen him in several years…he, though, told us that he rents out e-rickshaws in the Jankipuram neighbourhood of Lucknow,” said another officer.
Thereafter, the three-member police team, comprising Sub-Inspector Yogender Singh along with Head Constables Puneet Malik and Omprakash Dagar, went to the neighbourhood and started speaking to several e-rickshaw drivers. “One of the drivers told us that Ramu, who now went by the name Ashok Yadav, used to rent out several e-rickshaws in the neighbourhood. When the drivers, most of whom worked under Ramu, refused to share his contact details, we convinced them that we were only trying to get his nephew’s insurance money for which we needed his signature as a witness,” said an officer.
One of the drivers then directed the team to Ramu’s residence near a railway station in the area. “After we arrested him, he refused to identity as Ramu and even told us that had never been to Delhi in the first place. Thereafter, we called Sunita, the wife of the murder victim, along with her son, to Lucknow to identify the accused…Ramu, who was 55 years old by then, was taken into custody,” said another officer.
During interrogation, Ramu, also a sweeper and Lal’s neighbour at the time of the murder, told the police that he had hatched a plot to kill him as he did not want to part with the money collected as part of a “committee” or a chit fund formed between a group of neighbours.
