Delhi cops nab Nepal jail escapee in Bihar

The Delhi Police on Monday said Arjun Kumar alias Bhola, who carried a reward of ₹1 lakh and had eluded capture since 2017, was serving a 25-yr term at Kathmandu jail in a separate murder case

A 31-year-old man, wanted for murdering his girlfriend in Delhi nearly eight years ago, was finally apprehended at the India-Nepal border in Bihar’s Raxaul on Sunday after escaping a prison in Nepal in the midst of recent jailbreaks during the recent Gen Z protests that shook the neighbouring country.

The Delhi Police on Monday said Arjun Kumar alias Bhola, who carried a reward of ₹1 lakh. (Representational image)

The Delhi Police on Monday said Arjun Kumar alias Bhola, who carried a reward of ₹1 lakh and had eluded capture since 2017, was serving a 25-year term at Kathmandu jail in a separate murder case there.

Bhola, a native of Bihar’s Chapra district, had been serving a 25-year sentence in Kathmandu for the 2019 killing of a local woman. Investigators said the woman had opposed her daughter’s relationship with Bhola’s associate. Together with his friend Mohammad Naushad and Naushad’s cousin Mohammad Rashid, Bhola stabbed the woman to death – eerily similar to the way he had murdered his girlfriend in east Delhi’s New Ashok Nagar two years before that.

Deputy commissioner of police (crime) Harsh Indora said the New Ashok Nagar case dates to November 17, 2017, when Pappu Singh reported that his daughter had been abducted. Singh suspected Bhola, their neighbour.

When investigators raided Bhola’s rented residence in New Ashok Nagar the same day, they found the young woman’s body.

“There were at least 26 stab wounds in her neck. We learnt that Bhola wanted to marry the woman but she had refused. After learning she was set to wed someone else, he lured her to his room and killed her in a fit of rage,” Indora said. “Thereafter, he locked the room from outside and fled Delhi. He frequently changed his hideouts before crossing over to Nepal a few months after the crime,” the DCP said.

Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) official, who asked not to be named, said, “The person arrested by the Delhi Police is not among the 79 prisoners, who fled Nepal jails and were caught by the SSB teams deployed at the India-Nepal borders.”

Investigators found that in Nepal, Bhola struck up a friendship with Naushad. When Naushad’s girlfriend’s mother opposed their marriage, Bhola helped Naushad and his cousin Rashid murder her, stabbing her and slitting her throat. The three were arrested and sentenced to 25 years in prison.

But during the recent wave of Gen Z-led protests in Nepal, which triggered jailbreaks across the country, he managed to escape from Kathmandu jail, said DCP Indora.

The Delhi crime branch had been tracking Bhola through informers and quickly learned of his breakout, the DCP said, adding that anticipating that he would head for his ancestral home in Chapra, police deployed informers across Bihar. Intelligence soon confirmed his presence in Raxaul.

“A team was rushed to Raxaul, where Bhola was arrested on Sunday. He was brought to Delhi the next day,” DCP Indora said.

Interrogation revealed that Bhola’s father had moved to Delhi in 2002, working as a vegetable vendor. Bhola and his brother later joined him in Mandoli, where Bhola found employment in a sewing factory. After his father returned to Bihar following an accident, Bhola shifted to a rented room in New Ashok Nagar.

There, he fell for a young woman in the same building. She resisted his repeated demands to marry him. “Later, her family arranged her marriage elsewhere. Bhola felt betrayed, as the woman refused to elope with him. It annoyed him so much that he killed her,” the DCP added.