28 years after killing cop, ‘Dr Jhatka’ nabbed in Madhya Pradesh

Delhi Police arrested the 53-year-old on Tuesday, ending a 28-year manhunt.

For close to three decades, Rajender Bairagi lived a normal life.

Police said Bairagi had in the early 2000s assumed the identity of Rajender Singh Yadav and carried government-issued documents, including an Aadhaar card and voter ID, under that name (HT Photo/Sourced)

In around 2000, he started a job as a physical education (PE) teacher at a government school in Mumbai’s upscale Colaba area. A few years later, he moved to Mungaoli, a small town in Madhya Pradesh’s Ashok Nagar district, married a government hospital nurse in 2003, and opened a small clinic. Over time, locals came to know him as “Dr Jhatka”, a nickname inspired by his resemblance to the eccentric scientist from the animated series Motu Patlu.

What they did not know, however, was that the man treating patients was wanted in the murder of a Haryana Police constable, two attempted murder cases in Delhi, an escape from police custody, among many other cases.

Delhi Police arrested the 53-year-old on Tuesday, ending a 28-year manhunt.

Police said Bairagi had in the early 2000s assumed the identity of Rajender Singh Yadav and carried government-issued documents, including an Aadhaar card and voter ID, under that name. His wife, investigators said, had no knowledge of his criminal past.

A kabaddi player from Haryana, Bairagi allegedly drifted into crime in the late 1990s and was booked in theft and attempted murder cases in Delhi and Haryana.

Less than a year later, on February 14, 1999, he escaped while being escorted by Uttar Pradesh Police from Ghaziabad Jail to a Sonipat court. According to police, he fled near Gannaur railway station, prompting another FIR, but remained untraceable for the next 28 years.

Rather than living in hiding, investigators said Bairagi carefully constructed a new life.

His first stop was Mumbai, where he allegedly worked for about a year as a PE teacher at a Kendriya Vidyalaya. “It was the beginning of a carefully constructed second identity. But he realised that he could be traced in a big city like Mumbai,” a police officer familiar with the investigation said.

He later shifted to Mungaoli, adopted the identity of Rajender Singh Yadav, married in 2003, raised two children and established a small clinic. Police said he picked up basic medical knowledge through his wife, an auxiliary nurse-midwife, and occasionally also dealt in real estate.

“Because his wife was a nurse, he acquired basic knowledge of medicine and opened a clinic. People started calling him Dr Jhatka because he resembled a cartoon character,” the officer said.

According to investigators, he also managed to obtain multiple government-issued identity documents, allowing him to blend seamlessly into the community.

The breakthrough came while Delhi Police were investigating two 1997 attempted murder cases registered at Janakpuri police station against a proclaimed offender who had vanished.

“When we reached his village in Haryana, we found that he was also wanted in a murder case and had escaped from custody,” the officer said.

Investigators then began tracking his relatives, analysing their call detail records and identifying family members who remained in touch with him. “We traced the phone number he was using to speak with them and learnt that his wife was a nurse. That led us to the town in Madhya Pradesh,” the officer said.

Police teams spent two to three days conducting surveillance in Mungaoli before locating him through his wife’s identity. “He had successfully embedded himself into a new life using valid-looking local credentials,” Deputy Commissioner of police (Crime) Chander Kumar Singh said.

“The breakthrough came only after painstaking field intelligence was combined with technical surveillance to establish his true identity.”

Bairagi was arrested on Tuesday, produced before a local court for transit remand and brought to Delhi on Wednesday. The residents of Mungaoli, including his family, were unaware of the criminal cases pending against him, police said.