Gurugram police probing Chandigarh serial rapist-killer’s role in 2008 case
Investigating the rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl in Gurugram in 2008, they plan to match his DNA with evidence from that case
A team of Gurugram police arrived in Chandigarh on Tuesday to investigate the involvement of Monu Kumar, accused of raping and murdering at least three women in Chandigarh between 2010 and 2023, in a 2008 case.
Investigating the rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl in Gurugram in 2008, they plan to match his DNA with evidence from that case. Chandigarh Police will be sharing Kumar’s DNA with their Gurugram counterparts to determine his involvement in that case, said a police official.
According to police, Kumar, who is a taxi driver by profession, often travelled to Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab and Haryana for work, raising suspicions of his involvement in other crimes across these states.
In 2008, an eight-year-old girl was raped and murdered in Sector 37, Gurugram. The girl had left her home around 6 pm and her parents assumed she had gone to see Diwali fireworks. When she did not return, they searched for her. Her father, a tailor, later discovered her semi-naked body in a nearby vacant plot.
Despite filing an FIR under Sections 302 and 376, the local police could not catch the killer and eventually filed an untraced report.
After Chandigarh Police solved a 14-year-old rape and murder case with Kumar’s arrest, linking him to two more similar crimes in Chandigarh, they alerted nearby states about the serial killer-rapist. They suggested these states review their unsolved cases with similar modus operandi.
Thus, the Gurugram police have now reopened the file in the 2008 case. In the same year in September, Kumar was accused of the rape and murder of a four-year-old girl in Himachal Pradesh. However, he was acquitted due to lack of evidence.
Just four days after his acquittal in July 2010, Kumar raped and killed a 22-year-old MBA student in the Sector 38 West, Chandigarh. Shockingly, after Chandigarh Police failed to trace the accused in the first murder, he targeted the second victim, a 40-year-old woman in Maloya in 2022. On August 1, Chandigarh Police had filed a combined chargesheet against Kumar in both cases.
