Delhi Police have successfully apprehended a tenant accused of the brutal murder and robbery of his 65-year-old landlady in Rohini, concluding an intensive manhunt that spanned eight states and lasted over two months.
The Gruesome Discovery and Immediate Suspicion
The crime came to light on October 7, when the victim's son, who works as an MCD inspector, returned to the house and found his mother lying dead on a bed on the ground floor. Preliminary examination revealed scratch marks around her neck, indicating she had been strangled. The jewellery she was wearing, including gold earrings and a ring, along with her mobile phone, were missing. The elderly woman lived alone, as her children resided separately.
A case was immediately registered, and a special team was formed under Inspector Ajay Sharma, supervised by DCP (Crime) Pankaj Kumar. The investigation began with scanning CCTV footage from the vicinity. Officers quickly spotted a man leaving the locality at an unusually early hour, who was identified as Himanshu Yadav, one of the tenants in the house. Suspicion deepened when Yadav's phone was found switched off shortly after the murder.
A Pan-India Chase to Nab the Fugitive
What followed was a massive, coordinated search operation across state lines. Investigators tracked leads through eight states: Rajasthan, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Haryana, and Delhi itself. The team examined footage from over 1,000 CCTV cameras as Yadav kept changing his location every few days to evade capture.
The breakthrough came when police received a tip-off that Yadav was planning to return to Delhi from Uttar Pradesh to meet relatives before attempting to flee to Nepal. Acting on this intelligence, a trap was laid, and he was finally arrested at Japanese Park in Rohini.
Motive and Modus Operandi Revealed
During interrogation, the accused, who worked as a salesman, revealed his motive. Police stated that Yadav was under severe financial stress due to long-pending rent dues. He allegedly claimed to have felt "humiliated" after the landlady slapped him during an argument a few days before the murder, which pushed him to plan the crime.
The police reconstruction suggests that Yadav entered the woman's room while she was asleep. When she woke up and recognised him, he allegedly strangled her before she could raise an alarm. He then removed her jewellery and fled immediately without searching the rest of the house. According to the police, he later mortgaged the stolen jewellery in Bhiwani, Haryana, for Rs 70,000 to fund his life on the run.
The accused managed to remain a fugitive for nearly 75 days, constantly moving between states. His arrest brings a sense of closure to a case that highlighted both the vulnerabilities of elderly individuals living alone and the relentless pursuit capabilities of the Delhi Police across India.
