Om Prakash — also known as Pasha — figured on the list of “most wanted criminals” of police in the northern Indian state associated with Haryana.
With regard to 30 years, the former Indian native army employee — wanted in connection with a good alleged robbery plus murder – concealed in plain view in the neighbouring condition of Uttar Pradesh. There, he acquired a brand-new existence with official files, married a local girl and raised three children with her.
But earlier this week, his good fortune finally ran out whenever police arrested the particular frail 65-year-old through his home within a slum in Ghaziabad city.
Till his arrest, police say, Om Prakash wore several caps – driving a truck, touring nearby villages as part of a group to sing devotional tracks on religious events, even acting within 28 low-budget local films.
Om Prakash is in custody and it has not commented within the accusations against him, but Sub-Inspector Vivek Kumar of Haryana’s Special Task Drive (STF), who was section of the team that imprisoned him, told the particular BBC that he blames an alleged accomplice for the 1992 murder.
Two days after Om Prakash’s arrest made headlines, I went in search of his family members to hear their side of the story — and what they would say in his defence.
Within the sprawling Harbans Nagar slum where filter labyrinthine bylanes are usually unmarked and house numbers are not continuous, it took me three-and-a-half hours to track all of them down.
I fulfilled Rajkumari, his spouse of 25 years, plus two of his three children : a 21-year-old kid and 14-year-old daughter.
From underneath the bedroom mattress, Rajkumari pulls out a Hindi newspaper with details of the claims against her hubby and says they are still in shock, that they had no idea about his “alleged criminal past” and they are trying to wrap their own heads around the facts.
But if I needed gone looking for the family to defend Om Prakash, it was a futile physical exercise – they do not possess anything charitable to express about him.
Additionally they accuse him of betrayal. “I married him in 1997, not knowing that he was already married and had a family in Haryana, inch Rajkumari alleges.
Who is Om Prakash – and what can be he accused of?
A resident associated with Naraina village within Haryana’s Panipat area, “Om Prakash worked as a truck drivers for 12 many years in the Signal Corps of the Indian military, before being terminated in 1988 to be absent from duty for four years”, Mr Kumar states.
Mr Kumar states Om Prakash acquired several brushes using the law even before the alleged murder – he allegedly stole a car in 1986 and, four yrs later, a motorcycle, a sewing machine and a scooter. The particular crimes took place in different districts and in a number of them, police say, he was arrested and later freed on bail.
In January 1992, Mr Kumar says that Omkring Prakash and an additional man tried to rob a man travelling on the bike.
“When the man resisted, they will stabbed him. If they saw a group of villagers running towards all of them, they abandoned their particular scooter and happened to run away, ” this individual alleges.
The second man, Mr Kumar said, was caught and spent “seven-eight years in jail” before he was released on bail.
But Om Prakash vanished and shortly the trail went cold. Police announced him a “proclaimed offender”, and his document lay gathering dust.
Since their arrest, police state he’s told them that he spent the very first year after the alleged murder taking shelter in temples in the southern states associated with Tamil Nadu plus Andhra Pradesh.
Annually later, he came back to northern India, but instead of going home, he set up himself 180km (112 miles) away within Ghaziabad, where he found work driving vehicles.
Rajkumari, that married him in 1997, says regionally he’s known as Bajrang Bali or Bajrangi, after a shop he or she ran in the 1990s, selling and lending video cassette recorders (VCRs) of films. He’s also known as “Fauji Tau” – enthusiast uncle – the reference to his military years.
Through 2007, he has already been doing small roles in local Hindi-language films, playing a village head, the villain, even a police constable, mouthing dialogues and jiving in order to songs. One of the films – Takrav : has been watched 7. 6 million times on YouTube. Clips in the film have notched up several more million views.
“He acquired a brand-new set of official documents such as a voter card and an Aadhaar card, ” Mister Kumar says.
But Om Prakash, police say, made 1 fatal error — all of his new documents contained his and his father’s actual names, which led to his undoing.
Rajkumari’s story
Law enforcement agree that Omkring Prakash’s new family members or his nearby neighbours had no idea about his alleged “criminal past”.
Rajkumari says after their marriage, she did understand that Om Prakash was hiding something.
He took the girl to the Naraina town where he introduced the girl to his sibling and his family, telling her that they had been his friends.
A few years later, she says, she “found away about his previously marriage when one day his first wife turned up and developed ruckus outside the home”.
“That’s when I, and all our neighbours, found out that he had another life – a wife plus a son he had kept hidden away. We felt betrayed. ”
Their marriage, the girl says, was noticeable by his long absences, which the girl put down to their work as a long truck driver – but now she demands that it was because he has been visiting the other family.
Their relationship damaged, the couple struggled regularly and in 3 years ago, he disappeared once again.
“I was therefore fed up that I cut him off, I actually went to a local govt office and gave an undertaking in writing that I have absolutely nothing to do with him any longer. But he returned seven years afterwards and has been visiting off and on, ” she says.
“He calls us names, but whenever he comes, we give him some food out of shame because he’s our father and a classic man, ” adds his 14-year-old girl.
Rajkumari says that once previously, Haryana police took him away for a thought case of fraud.
“He spent six-seven months in jail then, yet he returned and told us that he had been cleared of most charges, ” she says.
Despite the arrest, he had remained on the list of absconders in the homicide case because law enforcement records are mostly not digitised and it’s not really common for police in different districts approach each other or talk about intel.
How was he or she traced?
In 2020 – a year after Haryana formed the Special Task Pressure to mainly take a look at cases of prepared crimes, narcotic seizures, terrorism and those that could involve crossing condition boundaries – Om Prakash’s file was reopened.
The push put him on their list of “most wanted” and announced an incentive of 25, 000 rupees ($315; £261) for information leading to his capture.
In past times too, there have been cases where criminals who have been on the run for a long time, sometimes decades, were arrested. But mature Indian Express journalist Amil Bhatnagar, exactly who spent years in Ghaziabad tracking crime stories, says “police generally reopen frosty cases only when they will involve terrorism or even serial murders or if they’ve obtained a tipoff”. Decades entirely clear why the force chose to reinvestigate this case.
But two months back again, police visited Naraina village and “spoke to people who were in their 50s and sixties, who would have some memory space of Om Prakash”.
That’s where they will got their very first clues – that will Om Prakash acquired visited the village about two decades back and that he could be residing somewhere in Uttar Pradesh.
On their 2nd trip, they discovered a phone number registered in Om Prakash’s name and were lastly able to trace his new address.
“The police staked the location for a week and identified his house. They say they also fought with identification simply because they only had a 30-year-old picture and now he looks very different.
“We wanted to make sure we got the right man, ” Mister Kumar said.
“The operation had been carried out with highest secrecy because i was worried that one false move and he’d run away for another 30 years, ” he added.
What happens next?
The arrest of a man away from home for such a long time is being seen as a triumph for that Special Task Pressure, but Mr Bhatnagar says the real hard work for the police begins now.
“They have to prove in the court that they have got the suitable man. And the courts will have to examine within great depth regardless of whether he is the right guy and whether he committed the crime he stands offender of. ”
Considering the crime took place years ago, Mr Bhatnagar says, the quality of evidence would also be in focus.
“The wear and tear of evidence is a very tangible aspect of criminal offense cases. It’ll be an uphill task for your police and criminal prosecution to build a water-tight case. ”
Just before I leave his home, I request Rajkumari if she has tried to meet your pet since his detain.
“The police say we have to submit our identity cards if we like to meet him, yet I don’t need to do that. What good could come out of that will? ”
Reading more from the BBC’s Geeta Pandey