Sacked driver who stabbed Delhi fashion designer over ‘non-payment of salary’ arrested

Anil Panwar had been on the run ever since he stabbed Kaveri Lal, a 26-year-old fashion designer, outside her home in Malviya Nagar on May 14.

A 27-year-old driver who stabbed his former employer in her neck after he was sacked from his job was arrested from a shelter home in South Delhi’s Nizamuddin on Friday.

Anil Panwar in police custody .

Anil Panwar had been on the run ever since he stabbed Kaveri Lal, a 26-year-old fashion designer, outside her home in Malviya Nagar on May 14.

Panwar told the police that Lal and her family had not paid him for a month’s work after he was sacked.

Employed by the family in September 2014 at a monthly salary of Rs 9,000, Panwar was removed from his job last December when he allegedly misbehaved with Lal’s friend, said Chinmoy Biswal, Additional DCP (South).

The unemployed man had recently found a job with another resident of Shivalik, where Lal lives with her family.

On April 14, he confronted Lal outside her home and demanded his dues but she refused, said the officer quoting Panwar.

Some neighbours and local boys who saw the crime raised an alarm, forcing Panwar to flee the spot. The attack was captured on a CCTV camera installed near the crime spot.

The attack had left Lal with ruptured wind and food pipes. She continues to remain in hospital but is out of danger, said police.

The police, meanwhile, registered a case of attempt to murder and formed teams to nab Panwar. They put his relatives’ phone numbers on surveillance and began monitoring his ATM withdrawals.

Alongside, the police raided homes of his relatives in Delhi-NCR as well as in Meerut. When Panwar got to know that a police team had reached as far as Meerut to raid one of his relatives’ homes, he allegedly panicked and called a distant relative for help.

Since that relative had already been questioned by the police, he managed to extract Panwar’s location from him. That helped the police trace the accused to a shelter in Nizamuddin where he was hiding.

Panwar is a father of two girls and had been working as a driver for the last eight years.