Bomb maker held for Delhi murder from UP

A 58-year-old man was arrested earlier this week in connection with the murder of a bus cleaner whose body was found in east Delhi’s Karkardooma on the day of Holi with multiple injuries caused by a blunt object and a knife, police officers associated with the case said on Thursday.

Investigators said the arrested man, Santosh Kumar alias Guddu, is an expert in assembling crude bombs and had even used one to kill a person more than two decades ago in east Delhi’s Anand Vihar.

According to investigators, Kumar was previously associated with the Mani Pasi gang based in Prayagraj but has not been active in recent years. Kumar earned the moniker “Guddu Bomb Baaz” from Prayagraj’s criminal underworld because he used to prepare crude bombs for his gang, according to officers familiar with the matter.

On March 8, the Farsh Bazar police station received a call about a corpse at the CBD ground in Karkardooma. When police arrived, they identified the corpse as Mohit Mehra, 40, a bus cleaner by trade. A murder case was filed, and the involvement of two suspects, identified as Nabi Mohammad and Baba, was confirmed during the investigation, said officers associated with the matter.

“On March 15, we arrested Mohammad in Farrukhabad, Uttar Pradesh. His interrogation revealed that after the murder, he and Baba parted ways at Anand Vihar railway station. We obtained the image of Baba from CCTV footage and distributed it to all police stations in Delhi and neighbouring states,” said deputy commissioner of police (Shahdara) Rohit Meena.

“We discovered that the second suspect, Baba, was originally from Prayagraj thanks to an extensive search of criminal records. He was last arrested in a murder case in Delhi in 2000. However, we discovered that Baba’s real name was Santosh Kumar,” said DCP Meena, adding, “Through technical investigation, we located and arrested Kumar from Farrukhabad on Tuesday. We learned that to avoid arrest in the bus cleaner’s murder case, Kumar spent days begging for food outside a temple in Farrukhabad. He then moved to Gautam Budh Nagar and lived as a homeless man.”