Cop’s hunt for kidnapper ends after a 15-year wait
NEW DELHI: A lot has changed in Delhi since the day Mahesh Choudhary, then 45, was abducted while he was driving in his Chevrolet Tavera SUV to Kanpur with two passengers 15 years ago. Roads have become wider and busier; flyovers and underpasses have been built; the Aam Aadmi Party(aap), which did not even exist at the time, has now been in power for over seven years. But one of the constants during these years has been a lone policeman doggedly trying to solve the case.
Assistant sub-inspector (ASI) Sanjeev Tomar’s quest ended on May 28, when he and members of his team arrested a man named Hari Om for abducting and killing Choudhary.
Tomar, 47, now posted with the crime branch, was a constable at the Badarpur police station when the crime took place in 2007. “The only clue that Choudhary’s family could provide was that he had asked his wife to cook egg curry for Hari Om, who was going to travel to Kanpur with him,” said Tomar.
Choudhary went missing on April 4, 2007 and the case was registered five days later, after his son, Rakesh Choudhary, then 22, filed a missing complaint.
Choudhary owned the Tavera and drove it as a taxi. He lived with his family at Molarband Extension near Badarpur.
For the police, the name Hari Om was a blind lead since they knew nothing else about him.
Over the next few weeks, a series of raids carried out at Hari Om’s village; and over the next two years at places linked to him in Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat. But there was no trace of the man.
Though the case was dead on paper, it wasn’t for ASI Tomar Even Choudhary’s family was losing patience. Though there was no headway for a decade-and-ahalf, the breakthrough came in March.
“I never let my informers get ‘non-operational’ as I constantly remained in touch and supported them in whatever way possible. On May 10, one of them told me about the suspect’s movement in the village,” said Tomar.
That night, Hari Om was sleeping on the terrace of his house. Fifteen years after he first started looking for him, Tomar and his men managed to nab him when he least expected it.
When the team asked Hari Om during the investigation about Choudhary and his SUV, he told them of what had happened on that fateful day -- Om said that he killed Choudhary, and abandoned his SUV on a street in Kanpur.