NEW DELHI: The Delhi Police has arrested a 25-year-old man for strangling his 65-year-old landlady to death and decamping with her jewellery in Delhi’s Budh Vihar two months ago after he was reportedly humiliated and slapped by the victim for failing to pay the rent, officials said on Thursday.
The accused, identified as Himanshu Yadav, was said to be under financial strain. He was nabbed from the Japanese Park in Rohini following an inter-state manhunt that lasted over two months.
He admitted during his interrogation that he killed his landlady because she had rebuked him for failing to pay his rent for several months. Yadav strangled his landlady when she identified him after waking up during an attack and then fled with her jewellery.
The matter came to light on October 7, when police received a PCR call reporting that the main door of a house in Budh Vihar was found locked. The victim’s lifeless body was subsequently discovered inside. Her body bore bruises, sustained during a scuffle. Her jewellery and phone were also missing.
After scrutinising footage from CCTV cameras installed in the area, the police centered their investigation on the tenant, who was nowhere to be found. An enquiry to his family revealed that he worked as a salesman and would often go out of town for work. He remained untraceable and his mobile phone switched off.
A police team travelled across several states, scanned footage from more than 1,000 CCTV cameras, checked every possible route and spoke to several people connected with the accused to ascertain his whereabouts.
After more than two months, the cops received a tip-off about Yadav planning a visit to Delhi from Uttar Pradesh and eventually fleeing to Nepal. The police laid a trap for him and got a hold of him, DCP (Crime Branch) Pankaj Kumar said.
Yadav disclosed that he had mortgaged the stolen jewellery in Haryana’s Bhiwani for Rs 70,000 and kept moving to evade arrest, never staying at one location for more than five days. One pair of gold earrings and a gold ring that he had robbed from the victim have been recovered, police said.
Further investigation in the case is currently under way.