Cold case solved after 21 years: Delhi Police arrest couple for killing 14-year-old girl in Nangloi

Senior officers said the couple confessed to killing the minor girl to settle scores with her father, who allegedly owed them wages for three to four years, amounting to lakhs of rupees

More than 21 years after a 14-year-old girl was hacked to death in her Nangloi home, the Delhi Police crime branch has solved the murder case by arresting an elderly couple who had managed to evade the law for over two decades, senior officers said on Monday.

Police identified the accused as Sikander Singh alias Sukwa, 60, and his wife Manju Devi, 55, and said they were arrested on February 11. (Representational image)

Police said the couple were living in hiding in a village in Bihar’s Banka district, from where they were arrested last week, closing one of west Delhi’s most haunting cold cases. Senior officers said the couple confessed to killing the minor girl to settle scores with her father, who allegedly owed them wages for three to four years, amounting to lakhs of rupees.

Police identified the accused as Sikander Singh alias Sukwa, 60, and his wife Manju Devi, 55, and said they were arrested on February 11. Both were declared proclaimed offenders in July 2006 by a Tis Hazari court, said deputy commissioner of police (crime) Vikram Singh.

DCP Singh said that on April 22, 2004, the 14-year-old girl was alone at her Shiv Ram Park home in Nangloi as her parents had gone to their hometown in Banka, Bihar, and her older brother, Naresh Kumar, was in Noida attending a friend’s wedding. Around 4.30am the next day, Kumar returned and found the house locked. When his sister did not respond to knocks on the door, he entered the house from the rear and found her hacked to death.

“He raised the alarm and neighbours informed the Nangloi police. A murder case was registered. A couple known to the family and living on the building’s first floor became prime suspects, as they were missing since the murder. However, they could not be arrested despite multiple raids,” said the DCP.

Around six months ago, DCP Singh said, inspector Pukhraj Singh of the crime branch’s NR-1 team reopened the case and began collecting information about the absconding suspects through technical surveillance and informants. He and his team visited the suspects’ hometown and stayed there for several days, meeting locals and gathering information.

A fortnight before the arrests, an informer in Banka told police that the couple was living in another village in the district. The team then conducted a camping operation there before raiding the house on February 11 and arresting the couple.

Their interrogation revealed that at the time of the crime, the girl’s father, Ganesh, worked as a waterproofing projects contractor and Sukwa worked with him as a labourer. Sukwa claimed he was not paid wages amounting to a few lakhs of rupees. Ganesh allegedly promised to buy a plot for Sukwa in lieu of the wages but purchased the property in his own name instead, said the DCP.

“Enraged, Sukwa decided to kill Ganesh’s daughter and take revenge. He included his wife in the plot. The couple killed the girl by slitting her throat when she was alone at home. The two families knew each other as they belonged to the same hometown in Banka,” added DCP Singh.

After committing the murder, the couple first fled to Uttar Pradesh’s Ghaziabad, where they stayed for 15 days. Fearing arrest, they then fled to Barauni in Bihar and stayed there for a year. Thereafter, they went to Kolkata and stayed there until last year, working as daily wagers.

“The couple returned to Banka just a couple of months ago. They were shocked to see us at their doorstep almost 21 years and 10 months after they committed the brutal murder. They were not expecting to be arrested after such a long time,” said an investigator.