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Here's how Delhi Police solved 25-year-old murder case

Kishan Lal, who lived in Tughlaqabad area of Delhi, was stabbed to death on a cold February night in 1997 and the killer was untraceable. After 25 years, in 2022, deceased's wife received a call from the Delhi Police to come to Lucknow and identify her husband's killer. Here's how Delhi Police cracked it.

Here is how Delhi Police solved 25 year old murder case posed as insurance agents gcw
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First Published Sep 18, 2022, 2:15 PM IST

Kishan Lal, a resident of Delhi's Tughlaqabad, was fatally stabbed on a chilly February night in 1997, and the accused went untraceable. The couple's first kid was due at the time, and Lal, who had a variety of odd jobs, had left behind his wife Sunita. The Patiala House Court designated absconding suspect Ramu, a daily wage earner, as an offender after litigation in the death case began. He shared a neighbourhood with Lal.

His case file from the pre-digital era continued to bite dust for over two decades until a team of the Delhi Police’s North District which is trained to handle old cases laid its hands on it in August 2021.  A year later, Sunita received a call from the Delhi Police requesting that she come to Lucknow right away.

Her husband's alleged murderer, a 50-year-old male, had been apprehended by the Delhi Police. She was asked to attest to the suspect's identification. Prior to fainting, Sunita, who was accompanied by her son Sunny (24), told the police that the man was Ramu.

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"When our police team first reached out to her last year to begin investigating this old case, the woman had given up all hope of ever receiving justice and even shut doors on them. However, given the length of time that had passed, it was understandable on her side," according to Deputy Commissioner of Police (North District) Sagar Singh Kalsi.

The officer praised the four-person squad for solving the 25-year-old case, adding that there were no eyewitnesses to the murder, no pictures of the suspect, and no indication of his location. Under the supervision of Inspector Surrender Singh, the team included Sub-Inspector Yogender Singh, Head Constables Puneet Malik and Omprakash Dagar, while Assistant Commissioner of Police (Operations) Dharmender Kumar served as their leader.

When the team travelled to Uttam Nagar in Delhi, where they had located a relative of Ramu, they pretended to be life insurance brokers in order to provide them with financial support for their departed relatives, according to Kalsi.

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The police stumbled across a mobile number that belonged to Aakash, Ramu's son, in Farrukhabad. Further investigation brought the police squad to Aakash's Facebook account, which they used to track him down in the Kapurthala neighbourhood of Lucknow, the official claimed.

When the police met Aakash, they wanted to know where his father Ramu was, who was now going by the name Ashok Yadav. He revealed to the group that he hasn't seen his father in a very long time and just knows that he now makes a career driving an e-rickshaw in the Jankipuram neighbourhood of Lucknow.

In order to contact many drivers in the Jankipuram region while hot on the trail of the killer, the police team pretended to be representatives of an e-rickshaw firm. Under the guise of offering them rebates on brand-new e-rickshaws as part of a central government project, they communicated with them.

"During one such encounter, on September 14, an e-rickshaw driver directed them to Ashok Yadav (Ramu), who was staying close to a train station. He was detained for interrogation and first he denied being Ramu or even having resided in Delhi," according to the officer.

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To establish his identification, the police team had called Ramu's family in Farrukhabad. They had also called Sunita in Delhi to ask if the man was indeed her husband's murderer. Finally when his identity was confirmed, Ramu (50) also confessed that he had hatched Lal’s killing for money from a “committee” (a chit-fund type system among a small group of people) in February 1997.

(With PTI inputs)

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