Delhi police arrests 84-year-old man for killing wife in 1986

Delhi Police arrested 84-year-old Chandra Shekhar Prasad, a fugitive for 37 years, for murdering his wife in 1986, using surveillance and tracking techniques.

A Delhi Police team, set up to try and close “cold cases”, managed to track and arrest an 84-year-old man who had been on the run for nearly four decades after bludgeoning his wife to death in 1986, officials said on Thursday.

The police team placed cellphone numbers linked to the accused’s relatives under surveillance and found trails to Nalanda in Bihar.

The police team placed cellphone numbers linked to the accused’s relatives under surveillance and found trails to Nalanda in Bihar, where they learned that the accused – who had since skipped several states and changed multiple aliases – used to visit frequently during festivals.

From there, police traced him to Alipur, where he had been living under the alias Prithvi for the past five days, investigators privy with the case details said.

The accused, Chandra Shekhar Prasad, from Bihar’s Nalanda district, was arrested from a factory storeroom at Nangli Poona near Alipur in outer Delhi on Wednesday.

The case in question dates back to October 19, 1986, when Prasad, then 44, allegedly killed his 38-year-old wife, Laxmi, by crushing her head with bricks at their house in east Delhi’s Shakarpur, said deputy commissioner of police (crime) Sanjeev Kumar Yadav. He suspected his wife of having an affair, and three accomplices helped him. The accused held their domestic help, Jai, the prime witness, at gunpoint. The couple’s four children were asleep in another room.

After the crime, Prasad and his associates fled Delhi. He was declared an absconder by a Delhi court in 1987. The case remained unsolved mainly due to lack of reliable leads and limited investigation tools. There were no photographs, digital databases, or identity records.

“Tracking the accused after such a long gap, with no digital footprint, was extremely challenging. There were no clues about the co-accused as well,” the DCP said.

Around three months ago, assistant commissioner of police Satendra Mohan, crime branch central range, formed a team to look into “cold cases.” While scanning court case records, inspector Sunil Kalakhande and his team found this unsolved case registered at Shakarpur police station.

The case file had details of the victim, the prime accused, and their residential addresses. Investigators tracked Prasad’s family members in Delhi and Bihar, and suspected mobile numbers linked to his relatives were placed under surveillance.

“Teams were sent to his village in Nalanda and learned that Prasad was still alive and visited during family or religious gatherings. Technical inputs suggested his presence following a recent death in the family. Investigators tracked his movements and traced him to Delhi’s Alipur,” the DCP added.

Interrogation revealed that Prasad evaded arrest by frequently relocating across Bihar, Punjab, Haryana, and Delhi – all while living under several fake identities.

He worked as a rickshaw puller in Punjab’s Patiala and took shelter at an ashram in Haryana.

“Prasad has claimed that the three co-accused have died. We are verifying his claims,” an investigator said.

Prasad came to Delhi from Bihar in 1969 and was employed as a composer with a newspaper. After his marriage in 1971, he started living at Shakarpur with his family.