Couple convicted for daughter-in-law’s murder arrested after eight years

An elderly couple booked in their daughter-in-law’s murder case was arrested after being on the run for more than eight years, said police on Tuesday

An elderly couple booked in their daughter-in-law’s murder case was arrested after being on the run for more than eight years, said police on Tuesday.

Sumitra Devi (68) and her husband Vasuki Nath Jha (74) were arrested from Bihar on July 19. (Sourced)

Investigators said during the time the couple--Vasuki Nath Jha (74) and Sumitra Devi (68)--evaded arrest, their son Rajnish Kumar Ranjan (50) served the sentence for his wife’s murder and was released in November last year.

According to police, a complaint was registered against Ranjan and his parents in 2006 after the death of a woman, identified as Pinki Devi, whose father alleged that his daughter was tortured for dowry and hence, killed. Pinki got married to Ranjan in 1995 and was living in Wazirabad, Sector-52.

The trio, police said, alleged Pinki died of several ailments on October 4, 2006, but were arrested under sections 302 (murder), 498-A (subjecting women to cruelty by husband or his relatives) and 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of the IPC at DLF police station in Sector-29 on October 9, 2006, after an autopsy established that the woman was strangulated to death.

After facing trial for three years, a court in Gurugram sentenced all three of them to 20 years’ imprisonment on July 13, 2009. The couple and their son challenged their sentencing before Punjab and Haryana high court, which granted them bail on January 25, 2012. “Till the time the high court granted bail, all three had served around five-and-a-half years of their sentence,” said a senior police officer privy to the case.

After several hearings, the high court upheld the lower court’s judgement in 2014, following which Ranjan immediately surrendered before law and started serving his sentence but his parents fled, said police.

“Ranjan served more than 14 years in prison and later got benefit of remittance for rest of the sentence, for which he was released in November last year” said the officer.

Later, the city court issued non-bailable warrants against Kumar’s parents as they didn’t surrender before law and start serving their imprisonment term even though the high court upheld their sentence, said police.

Investigators said the court issued at least 50 arrest warrants against the couple after 2014. Recently, the matter came to the attention of senior police officials that two people convicted in a murder case are continuously evading arrest, after which a special investigation team was formed to nab them.

Virender Vij, deputy commissioner of police (east), said a special team was formed two months ago to trace the couple and produce them before court as soon as possible. The hunt for the couple ended on July 19 this year when they were finally traced to Thera village of Warisaliganj in Nawada, Bihar.

“Sub-inspector Sunita and head constable Fakhruddin Khan flew to Bihar to arrest the couple. They were brought to Gurugram the next day (on July 20) and were sent to jail,” said Vij.

Police said the couple lived only in metropolitan cities such as Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, and continuously changed locations to evade arrest.

“After the arrest, police came to know that they worked only at such places, where the employers won’t ask for their identity documents,” said a senior police officer adding that as soon as the couple was asked to produce any kind of document, they fled the workplace and the city so that their identity remained under the cover and police could not track them.

Police said recently, the couple was staying in Delhi, which helped the police to trace them and set up technical surveillance, before they reached their native village in Bihar, from where they were arrested.