Radhika’s killer caught, in 4-day police custody

IANS

New Delhi, 13 March 2011: Four days after he shot dead Delhi University student Radhika Tanwar for snubbing him, Ram Singh alias Vijay, described as a psychopath, was sent to four days police custody here Saturday after his overnight arrest in Mumbai.

 

The 25-year-old was presented before Metropolitan Magistrate Arul Verma, who allowed the Delhi Police to quiz him for four days to unravel the cold-blooded murder that caused widespread outrage.

 

Vijay, whose identity was made public Friday, was nabbed from Tagore Nagar in Vikhroli suburb of northeast Mumbai at 11 pm on Friday.

 

The arrest ended one of the biggest hunts launched by Delhi Police in recent times. Headed by Deputy Commissioner of Police HGS. Dhaliwal, 19 special teams were formed to track down the killer.

 

A tailor who first came to Delhi in 2005, Vijay shot dead Radhika, a second year student of Ram Lal Anand College in south Delhi, on a foot overbridge March 8 when she was walking to her college.

 

The weapon, a locally-made .315 bore pistol, was seized Saturday from the house of Shekhu, a friend in south Delhi’s Pilanji village, Delhi Police Commissioner BK Gupta said.

 

Gupta called Vijay a psychopath whose obsession was to follow women. He had regularly stalked Radhika. On March 5, she snubbed him when he tried to speak to her.

 

This, Gupta said, was the immediate provocation for the murder.

 

He killed her to avenge the humiliation he faced because of Radhika, Dhaliwal said, adding Vijay suffered from "obsessive compulsive disorder".

 

He had first spotted her in 2007. The same year, he was caught by locals in Naraina Vihar and bashed up twice, in front of his friends. Humiliated, he left for Mumbai.

 

But he neither forgot the beatings -- nor Radhika. He kept returning to the capital.

 

When Vijay came to Delhi one and a half months ago from Mumbai, he took an auto to follow the bus which Radhika took. At times he even boarded the bus.

 

Radhika did not tell her family about the stalking but was frank with her friends, said Dhaliwal.

 

When she snubbed him, Vijay decided to kill her. He got the killer weapon from a friend in Gurgaon.

 

On Tuesday, Vijay shot Radhika from point blank range and then ran clutching the weapon. But nobody stopped him.

 

He then gave the weapon to his friend in Pilanji village and then met two other friends, Tabreez and Ashraf, in Rohini.

 

At night he told them that he had killed Radhika. He asked them to bring his belongings from his embroidery unit at Shakurpur Basti.

 

The next day, the three went to Gurgaon in search of a new job for Vijay.

 

But when they realised the gravity of the crime, Ashraf and Tabrez asked him to quit Delhi. They dropped Vijay at the Gurgaon railway station.

 

Vijay spent the night at the station and took a train for Mumbai Thursday.

 

Ashraf and Tabrez were held Friday night in Sitapur in Uttar Pradesh.