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15 years on, taxi driver gets life term for rape, murder of Chandigarh MBA student
Monu Kumar, who evaded arrest for over a decade, had assaulted and murdered 21-year-old victim in city’s Sector 38 West on July 30, 2010. He was nailed through semen preserved from the victim’s body.
More than 15 years after taxi driver Monu Kumar raped and murdered a 21-year-old MBA student in Sector 38 West, Chandigarh, a local court, which convicted him on Thursday, sentenced him to life imprisonment on Friday.
While pronouncing the quantum of punishment, the court of additional district and sessions judge Dr Yashika also imposed a fine of ₹50,000 each for the rape and murder. The 39-year-old father of two girls was convicted under Sections 302 (murder) and 376 (rape) of the Indian Penal Code.
Having evaded arrest for over a decade, Kumar was nailed through semen preserved from the victim’s body. He was apprehended in May 2024 after an eerily similar crime in Maloya revived the probe that had gone cold for 14 years.
Forensic analysis concluded that the semen samples from the bodies of both victims — the MBA student and a 40-year-old woman who met the same fate 2km away in Maloya locality in 2022 — belonged to the same man.
Months later, Kumar’s DNA also matched the semen found on the clothes of a 55-year-old woman, who was brutally murdered in Sector 54 on February 27, 2024.
Following his arrest, Kumar had revealed that he found the MBA student talking on her phone while sitting on her scooter near a secluded taxi stand in Sector 38 West on July 30, 2010. He had attacked her from the back with a heavy stone, leaving her half dead. He then dragged her into the bushes where he raped her. The student was found in semi-naked condition in the bushes and was rushed to the Post-Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh, where she was declared brought dead. There were strangulation marks on the neck, and the body also bore injuries on the wrist, thigh and the back.
According to the police, Kumar was heavily intoxicated when he committed the crime. The chargesheet said Kumar took one of her two mobile phones, sold it in the Industrial Area and discarded the other phone in a jungle. He also signed a receipt using a false address.
After his arrest, the chargesheet was filed on August 2, 2024, and the charges were framed on August 21, 2024. The trial concluded in just over a year.
Police said Kumar, who has studied till Class 7, hadn’t even registered for an Aadhaar card to evade arrest. He worked as an inter-city taxi driver and mostly stayed out of town.
A resident of the now-razed Shahpur Colony in Sector 38 West, he is the father of two daughters, but separated from his wife and them since 2011. He belongs to Uttar Pradesh and continues to face trial in the other two rape-murder cases.
He was booked in a similar rape-murder case in Hamirpur, Himachal Pradesh, in 2008, but was acquitted after an 18-month trial due to lack of evidence.
Apart from the three murder cases in Chandigarh, he is named in seven other cases, mostly for theft.
