Taking a cue from film, caretaker kills differently abled patient

Accused, a minor, apprehended from railway station; stolen cash, jewellery recovered from him

September 02, 2022 01:33 am | Updated 01:33 am IST - New Delhi

Cash and jewellery seized by the police from the accused’s possession.

Cash and jewellery seized by the police from the accused’s possession. | Photo Credit: Special arrangement

A locked room, a single black glove, some scribblings on the bathroom mirror and a dead body on the bed. The crime scene seemed to have been lifted straight from a Bollywood thriller and a policeman in the investigating team suddenly remembered the name – Tu Chor Main Sipahi.

The 1996 action drama became the premise of a 17-year-old caretaker’s murder and robbery plan that he executed on Wednesday afternoon at the posh Safdarjung Enclave in south Delhi. With a pillow, the accused allegedly smothered an 18-year-old differently abled boy he was attending to and fled the house with cash and jewellery worth lakhs of rupees. The deceased’s family has a jewellery business in Chandni Chowk and Mumbai.

The Delhi police promptly deployed over 60 officers in search of the accused and he was caught the same night from a train minutes before it was to leave the New Delhi railway station.

‘Killer King’

The accused allegedly admitted during his interrogation that he planned the murder after watching the popular Hindi film in which the killer left a black glove with an initial ‘K’ near the victim’s body and scribbled a message on the mirror before fleeing with stolen items.

Though the accused’s glove had no initials, he wrote a cryptic message using a red toothpaste on the bathroom mirror that could be interpreted as “Killer King”, the name used by the murderer in the movie, and a four-digit code, according to the police.

Crime scene

At 5.05 p.m. on Wednesday, the police received a PCR call about a murder at a house in the Safdarjung Development Area.

The complainant, the deceased’s sister told the police that her parents and grandmother had gone to a nearby temple around 2.30 p.m and she had left for Green Park market at 3.45 p.m. Her brother was alone in the house with the caretaker.

An hour later, the sister returned home and found her brother lying unconscious in his bed on the first floor of the house and the caretaker missing from the scene, a family member said. The family has alleged that the deceased was sexually assaulted. A senior police officer said the postmortem report is awaited and oly based on it would they be able to confirm or disprove the family’s doubts.

According to the victim’s family, the sister found the main door of the first floor flat ajar. When she went inside, her brother’s room was locked and the keys were kept near the door.

“All the keys of the other rooms were scattered all over the house. Some keys were dumped in the toilet too,” said a family member.

The family told the police it found nothing suspicious about the accused’s behaviour. “He never said no to any work and did his job obediently,” said another family member, adding that the accused had limited access to the other rooms of the house.

The caretaker had been employed three months ago through a maid who had worked in the area for a long time. The family said there had been many caretakers for the victim, but the accused was the first full-time worker. “No verification was done for the caretaker,” the police said.

Search operation

Six teams of South West district police were created to apprehend the accused. “After we registered an FIR under Sections 302 (murder) and 394 (voluntarily causing hurt in robbery), 64 police officers were deployed on the ground to nab him. We got a tip-off from his friends that the accused might leave for his village in Sitamarhi [Bihar], so officers were deployed to different railway stations and bus stops,” DCP (South West) Manoj C said.

After thorough searches, a boy, who resembled the photograph of the caretaker, was apprehended from New Delhi railway station’s platform number 16, the DCP added.

“The accused had boarded a train which was supposed to leave at 8.15 p.m. He was apprehended at 8.07 pm,” the officer said, adding that the stolen jewellery and ₹40,000 cash were recovered from his possession.

On interrogation, the accused allegedly revealed that he felt “humiliated” while cleaning the victim and wanted to leave the job but couldn’t do so for lack of money. He decided to rob the family and recreated the film scene to mislead the police and get some time to leave the city, the accused told the police.

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