Delhi: 10-year cat & mouse ends with murderer’s arrest

NEW DELHI: On June 25, 2011, a headless body packed in a sack was recovered from Jhandewalan.
Though an investigation was initiated to identify the body and catch the killers, police had few clues to start with. One of the leads was “Decent Tailors”, a tag on the deceased’s bloodstained shirt’s collar, and the other was surgery marks on his hand.
Three days later, a family from Najafgarh went to their local police station reporting that their kin, aged about 50, had gone missing. They were directed to Paharganj police station, which had published a hue and cry notice about the torso being found at Jhandewalan. On being asked to identify the torso, the family confirmed it was their kin, Layak Ram, with the help of the surgery mark. Police also traced the tailor, who identified the body too.
Meanwhile, a head was recovered almost 20km away in a drain in Aman Vihar. It belonged to Ram, the family confirmed.
With identification done, police proceeded towards catching the killers. Ram, who had retired from Border Security Force a few years before his murder, had been working as a financier and a property dealer, the family told cops.
There were multiple stab wounds and the whole process of dumping the body parts indicated that it was not a one-person job. Police then started tracking Ram’s friends and acquaintances. First on the list were his business partner Pawan and another acquaintance, Shatrughan. Ram was last seen with them.
Even as investigation pointed towards their role in the crime, Pawan was found dead on railway tracks and Shatrughan went missing. Pawan’s death appeared to be suicide. Using technical surveillance, police caught hold of a third suspect, Roop Chand, who helped them unravel the mystery.
Chand worked as a driver at Pawan’s factory. Pawan owed Ram money and was unable to return it due to losses in his business. Ram frequently insulted and threatened him, after which Pawan allegedly colluded with Shatrughan to kill him. After the murder, the duo made Chand drive a tempo to dump the body parts.
A manhunt was launched for Shatrughan, then aged around 23, but he had gone underground by then. In 2012, a court declared him a proclaimed offender even as multiple raids failed to trace his whereabouts. Chand, meanwhile, was convicted for destruction of evidence and released after serving a three-year sentence.
The case became history, but 10 years later police received a tip-off from an unidentified source informing them about Shatrughan’s location in his hometown Begusarai, Bihar. A raid was conducted and he was arrested from his house.
During interrogation, Shatrughan revealed how he had assumed another identity, of Mukesh Ram, and changed his looks to hide his tracks. He kept changing his location every six months or a year and made a living by doing odd jobs. In 2017, he was in Bathinda and then fled to Dehradun in 2019. Of late, he was living in Bengaluru and happened to visit his native place when police were tipped off by a source.