29 years on, two ‘tantriks’ arrested in UP for killing neighbour, 3 children

According to the police, the accused – identified as Anil Saroj and Sunil Saroj – changed their names and addresses several times in 29 years to evade arrest and eventually settled in Jaunpur, proclaiming themselves as tantriks. The third accused, Rajkumar Amarnath Chauhan, 45, was arrested in December 2022 after he landed in Mumbai from Qatar, where he had been working since 2007

Mumbai: Two brothers, who turned into tantriks, were arrested on Sunday in Jaunpur, Uttar Pradesh, for allegedly murdering their neighbour and three of her children in Mira Road in 1994 over a dispute with the woman’s husband. The police approached the duo, who left the city after the incident and had been on the run for 29 years, under the guise of troubled persons, seeking help from the tantriks.

29 years on, two ‘tantriks’ arrested in UP for killing neighbour, 3 children

According to the police, the accused – identified as Anil Saroj and Sunil Saroj – changed their names and addresses several times in 29 years to evade arrest and eventually settled in Jaunpur, proclaiming themselves as tantriks. The third accused, Rajkumar Amarnath Chauhan, 45, was arrested in December 2022 after he landed in Mumbai from Qatar, where he had been working since 2007.

“In 1994, Chauhan and the Saroj brothers stayed together in Mira Road and were neighbours to Rajnarayan Prajapati, who worked in a rationing shop. Prajapati stayed with his wife Jagrani Prajapati, and their children Pramod, Pinky, Pintu and an infant,” an officer from the Mira Road police station said.

On November 16, 1994, the accused fought with Prajapati after Pinky accidentally broke the handle of one of their suitcases while playing, the officer said, adding, “The fight escalated to violence after which Prajapati threatened to call the police and the accused backed off. However, the next day, when Prajapati came home for lunch, he saw the door of his house locked from outside and faint cries of his wife coming from inside the house.”

He added that when Prajapati opened the window, he saw his entire family bludgeoned to death. According to the police, the trio earlier had fights with the Prajapati family over trivial issues, and on November 16, they killed the family to teach Prajapati a lesson. They then hid the bloodied clothes and knives in their house before fleeing the city, police officials said.

The Kashimira police had then suspected that the three men had fled from the city, and the case had gone cold after the trio could not be traced. Last year, however, after the MBVV Commissionerate came into existence, the crime branch reopened the case and started hunting the trio.

“We had the photos of the accused, but they were in their early twenties at the time, and it was really a mystery to consider how they would look after 29 years,” Avinash Ambure, deputy commissioner of police (crime branch), MBVV, said.

Ambure added that the Uttar Pradesh Special Task Force (STF) gave them a tip-off that Anil and Sunil were staying in Jaunpur as Vijay and Sanjay and had become self-proclaimed tantriks. Soon after the information, the MBVV crime branch sent a team to UP, and the policemen pretended to be men in trouble and approached the tantriks and clicked their recent photos to ascertain their identities.

“After minutely comparing their photos, we found that the tantriks were Anil and Sunil,” added Ambure. The police then arrested the two and brought them to Mumbai on Sunday.