50-year-old woman on the run for five years held in dowry death case

She was arrested from east Delhi’s Gandhi Nagar area where she had been living in a rented accommodation for some months, police said.

The Delhi Police Crime Branch on Sunday arrested a 50-year-old woman who had been absconding for over five and a half years in connection with a dowry death case registered at Mandawali police station in east Delhi.

50-year-old woman on the run for five years held in dowry death case

The accused, Kaushalya Devi, had been declared a proclaimed offender by a Delhi court in March 2023 for evading arrest in the alleged murder of her sister-in-law, 25-year-old Neeraj, in December 2019.

Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime) Vikram Singh said Neeraj was allegedly strangled to death at her in-laws’ residence in Mandawali by Kaushalya and other relatives, including the victim’s husband, Bhram Singh. While Bhram and another accused, Ram Avtar, were arrested shortly after the incident, Kaushalya managed to escape and remained untraceable for years.

She was arrested from east Delhi’s Gandhi Nagar area where she had been living in a rented accommodation for some months, police said.

“To locate and nab Kaushalya, the eastern range-II team of the crime branch used advanced technical surveillance tools, which indicated her presence in Gandhi Nagar, Delhi. Upon analyzing multiple call detail records (CDRs),they tracked Kaushalya’s location. Accordingly, her rented house was raided and she was arrested,” said the DCP.

Upon interrogating her, it was revealed that she had been frequently changing her locations and identities, living in Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh over the past five years. She had been living in a rented accommodation and working at a garment factory.

The case had originally been registered under charges of murder, dowry death, and criminal conspiracy.