How stalker Delhi cop killed Monika Yadav in drain, hid murder for 2 years

The charge sheet filed in the case says Surender Singh Rana first threw Monika Yadav in the drain, then went down to strangle her after she survived

After Monika Yadav, 28, a former Delhi Police constable, refused to marry Surender Singh Rana, 42, a Delhi Police head constable, on September 8, 2021, he took her to a deserted stretch in northwest Delhi’s Mukhmelpur, slapped her multiple times, and then threw her in a drain from a height of 25-30 metres – but she survived. Rana then walked down to the drain, strangled her, pushed her body underwater, and covered it with stones, according to a charge sheet filed in the murder that had stunned Delhi when details of the crime and elaborate cover-up plot emerged last year.

Surender Singh Rana kept Monika Yadav's murder under wraps for two years by tricking her family into believing that she had eloped and married a person named Arvind. (Sourced)

The new revelations about the brutality of the murder were made in a disclosure statement, which is a part of the 30-page charge sheet submitted to a Delhi court on December 26 last year. The charge sheet and disclosure statement were seen by HT on Thursday.

According to the police, Rana kept the murder under wraps for two years by tricking her family into believing that she had eloped and married a person named Arvind.

Yadav’s mother Shakuntala and sister Purnima, however, were suspicious, and submitted a complaint to the Mukherjee Nagar police station on October 20, 2021, in which they said that they had visited her paying guest accommodation on October 9 — a month after they lost contact with her — but couldn’t find her.

Yadav joined the Delhi Police in 2014, and was posted in the police control room (PCR) unit, where she met Rana. The suspect is married and has a son.

“Yadav used to work with me, and slowly, my friendship with her grew and we started talking on the phone. I also visited her house regularly. Since her father had passed away, her family had started trusting me. Monika also used to visit my house and gradually, I started liking her and wanted her to be mine,” Rana allegedly said in his disclosure statement.

In 2020, Yadav left Delhi and went back to her home town Bulandshahr, Uttar Pradesh, to study. “I wasn’t happy without her, and my family was also upset with me over this... I wanted her to be mine at all costs. Meanwhile, my family and in-laws also got to know that I wanted to marry Monika. They started to trouble me, and my wife also threatened to leave me,” Rana told the police, according to the charge sheet.

On September 2, 2021, Yadav moved to Delhi to prepare for the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) exams.

“I used to pressure her to come to Delhi and call her to meet at several places in Delhi and Uttar Pradesh... In 2021, Monika came to Delhi for her UPSC preparation because I persuaded her... I helped her with a paying guest accommodation and got her admitted at the Sanskriti IAS coaching (centre),” he was quoted as saying in the charge sheet.

A proposal and a rejection

On September 8, according to the charge sheet, Rana picked up Yadav from outside her PG accommodation at 2.30pm and the two went to Vardhaman Mall in Mukherjee Nagar, where he proposed to her. “I requested her to marry me a number of times, but she did not agree. She said that she didn’t want to marry then as she wanted to fulfil her father’s dream of becoming an IAS officer,” disclosed Rana, according to the charge sheet.

The two had burgers from an outlet and left the mall by 4.30pm-5pm. As per the charge sheet, he took Yadav to his residence in Alipur on the pretext that her sister was there too.

“Mere mann main ye aa gaya ki agar Monika meri nahi hui to main use kisi ki nahi hone dunga (I decided that if Monika can’t be mine, I won’t let her be anyone else’s either),” is what Rana allegedly told police.

The two got off from a rickshaw near Budhpur, where a road was being constructed, and he proposed to her again. She turned him down, again. In his disclosure statement, he allegedly said, “I asked her again if she wanted to marry me, but she said no, and said that she wanted to study further and fulfil her father’s dream of becoming an IAS officer... We fought a lot, and I slapped her multiple times after which I threw her in a drain.” She survived the fall, threatened to call the cops on him, after which he strangled her, and buried her under rocks and stones.

Two years later, on September 30, 2023, her remains were found in the drain. In the charge sheet, police noted that they recovered two pelvic bones, a part of the hand joint, femur bone, ribs, and forearm bone, among eight exhibits which were sent for a DNA match against Yadav’s mother.

Last December, the forensics report proved that it was a match with Shakuntala Yadav, the victim’s mother.

A string of lies

After she was killed, Rana weaved a web of lies in front of Yadav’s family. According to the victim’s sister Purnima’s statement to the police, mentioned in the charge sheet, the family received five calls between September 11, 2021 and January 5, 2022, from two different numbers, wherein a man who identified himself as Arvind said Monika and he were in love with each other, had got married, and eloped to Punjab.

“On September 11 (2021), my brother-in-law received a call from a man who said that he was Arvind and that he and Monika got married. On September 29, my mother received a call from a different number, and the man again identified himself as Arvind and that Monika was with him. He then called us on October 12 and November 2 in 2021, and then on January 5, 2022 and deceived us,” Purnima said.

According to the charge sheet, in 2022, Rana even showed some messages to the family on his phone, purportedly from Yadav -- in which she said she didn’t want to return home. But here’s when Purnima and Shakuntala’s suspicions grew. “He claimed that those messages were from my sister but that was not possible because she always addressed our mother as ‘Mummy G,” but in the messages, it was written ‘Mami’,” the charge sheet quoted Purnima as saying.

An analysis of the call detail records (CDR) of the two numbers from which the family received the call from “Arvind” led the police to Ravin -- Rana’s wife’s brother. The SIM card was allegedly sold to him by one Rajpal, and the two were arrested on September 28.

According to the charge sheet, Ravin confessed to the police that he made the calls to Yadav’s family at the behest of Rana, who pressured him to do so to save his sister’s marriage. The next day, Rana was arrested.

A Delhi Police officer, who asked not to be named, told HT, “This is watertight case and after the DNA match, we are hopeful of a conviction. The biggest challenge was to get evidence against Rana, which we overcame once we got the CDR.”