Delhi Police Solves 25-year-old Murder Case, Nabs Accused Living Under Different Identity

New Delhi, 18 September 2022: Recently a 25-year-old murder case was solved by the Delhi police’s North District after it opened old and unsolved cases on August 2021.

In 1997, Kishan Lal, a resident of Delhi’s Tughlaqabad neighborhood, was fatally stabbed on a chilly February night while the killer managed to escape.

Working odd jobs, Kishan Lal had left behind his wife Sunita, who was carrying their first child. While the Patiala House Court ruled suspect Ramu, a daily wage worker, untraceable while the death case went to trial. Ultimately, the case file was left to gather dust for more than two decades.

But, after Delhi Police reopened the case, wife Sunita was called by the police to reach Lucknow immediately as her husband’s alleged killer, a 50-year-old male, had been apprehended. She was asked to attest to the suspect’s identity.

Before she fainted, Sunita, who was accompanied by her son Sunny, told the police that the man was indeed Ramu.

The police team had spent months expecting to find one significant hint, so it was pretty much a wild goose chase for them. They conducted numerous undercover investigations in Delhi and Uttar Pradesh during that time, according to the Deputy Commissioner of Police (North District) Sagar Singh Kalsi.

The police officer had disguised themselves as life insurance agents when they had located a relative of Ramu, in order to provide them with funding for their deceased relatives.

When they saw Ramu’s relatives, the team also succeeded in getting to Khanpur village in Uttar Pradesh’s district Farrukhabad on the same pretense.

The police soon stumbled across a mobile number that belonged to Aakash, Ramu’s son, in Farrukhabad. Upon further investigation, Aakash’s Facebook account was used to track him down in the Kapurthala neighborhood of Lucknow, the official claimed.

When the police encountered Aakash, they wanted to know where his father Ramu, who was now going by the name Ashok Yadav, was. He revealed to the group that he hasn’t seen his father in a very long time and only knows that he now makes a career driving an e-rickshaw in the Jankipuram neighborhood of Lucknow. The undercover police team was also concerned that Ramu may once more go into hiding if word got out that someone had been asking questions about him, he added.

In order to contact many drivers in the Jankipuram region, the police team also pretended to be representatives of an e-rickshaw company. 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 questioning and first denied being Ramu or even having lived in Delhi, according to the officer.

To establish his identity, the police team had called Ramu’s relatives in Farrukhabad. They had also called Sunita in Delhi to ask if the man was really her husband’s killer.

When his name was finally revealed, Ramu (50) also admitted to planning Lal’s murder in February 1997 in exchange for cash from a “committee”. According to police, he planned a party for February 4 when he got Kishan Lal drunk before murdering him and running off with the money. He then hid in several places before settling in Lucknow.

The official noted that the Timarpur police station is now continuing the legal proceedings in the 25-year-old murder case.

The Deputy Commissioner of Police (North District) Sagar Singh Kalsi said, “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 part too.”