Tenant arrested for strangling elderly landlady to death, robbing jewellery in Delhi’s Budh Vihar

New Delhi, Dec 18 (PTI) The Delhi Police has arrested a 25-year-old man for allegedly strangling his 65-year-old landlady to death and fleeing with her jewellery in Delhi’s Budh Vihar, officials said on Thursday.

Himanshu Yadav (25), who was reportedly under financial stress, was arrested from the Japanese Park in Rohini following an inter-state manhunt spanning over two months, they said.

Yadav was working as a salesman with a private garment company and had earlier suffered losses in business, the share market and online gaming, police said.

During interrogation, the accused admitted that he was under severe financial stress and had been unable to pay rent for several months.

He strangled his landlady when she identified him after waking up during an attack and then fled with her jewellery, a senior police officer said.

The incident came to light on October 7 when police received a PCR call reporting that the main door of a house in Budh Vihar was found closed and, upon opening, the body of an elderly woman was found inside.

The woman was found lying on her bed with scratch marks around her neck and signs of a struggle, the officer said.

During inspection, police found that the woman’s mobile phone and the jewellery she was wearing, including earrings and a gold ring, were missing.

She lived alone at home, while her children lived separately. Investigators analysed CCTV footage from the area and identified suspicious movement of one of the tenants in the early morning hours after the crime.

The suspect, Yadav, who switched off his mobile phone, had gone missing, police said.

“Teams travelled across states, scanned more than 1,000 CCTV cameras and questioned several people connected to the accused to trace his whereabouts,” the officer said.

Acting on a tip-off that Yadav returned to Delhi from Uttar Pradesh and was planning to flee to Nepal, police laid a trap and arrested him in Rohini.

Yadav disclosed that he mortgaged the stolen jewellery in Bhiwani, Haryana, for Rs 70,000 and kept moving to evade arrest, never staying at one location for more than five days.

One pair of gold earrings and a gold ring that he robbed from the victim have been recovered, police said. PTI SSJ ARI