New Delhi, Jun 26 (PTI): The stabbing to death of a 62-year-old migrant worker in the busy Dhaula Kuan subway in south Delhi has raised serious questions over security arrangements in the capital’s pedestrian subways, with police arresting a 48-year-old vagabond in connection with the killing.
The victim, Champai Ho, hailed from Jharkhand’s East Singhbhum district, police said.
He was found lying in a pool of blood in the subway on Thursday morning. According to police, the incident was reported at the Dhaula Kuan police chowki at 6:45 am. A team rushed to the spot and found the victim with multiple stab wounds.
A murder case was registered at the Delhi Cantonment police station and a probe launched.
Through CCTV footage, police identified the accused as Anil Mandal, a resident of Bihar’s Banka district, and traced him hiding near the crime scene.
Mandal told police that he earlier worked as an autorickshaw driver in Delhi. He had returned to his native village but came back to the city after disputes with his family and was living as a vagabond since then, police said.
Investigators found that Ho had come to Delhi from Jharkhand’s Ghatshila by train and got off at the Hazrat Nizamuddin railway station. He was on his way to Rajasthan’s Bhiwadi, where he worked as a mason and lived alone in rented accommodation. His family stays in Jharkhand.
Police said Ho and Mandal did not know each other, and the motive behind the killing is yet to be established.
Sources said this is being seen as the first such incident in a Delhi subway. On March 15, 2008, a man was killed outside the Palika Bazaar subway.
The incident has sparked concerns over the safety of Delhi’s subway network. The city has around 82 subways, of which 62 are maintained by the Public Works Department (PWD) and 20 by the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC). These subways are used by lakhs of commuters daily.
However, the security infrastructure in many of these subways is inadequate, with either limited CCTV coverage or no cameras at all, the sources said. Regular police patrolling is also missing at several locations, while poor lighting and deserted stretches at night make these places vulnerable to anti-social elements.
Passersby at Dhaula Kuan expressed fear after the incident. Pawan, a commuter, said the killing has shown that merely constructing subways is not enough and ensuring that these places are safe is equally important. Another commuter, Akash, said anti-social elements often gather at such places, adding that the incident might have been prevented had there been regular police patrols.
A security guard, Vijay Kumar, who was present near the subway in the morning, told PTI that he noticed heavy police deployment at the scene.
“I came at 8 am and saw police near the spot. Later, I came to know it was a murder case,” Kumar said.
The post-mortem was conducted at the Deen Dayal Upadhyay Hospital. PTI SSJ RC
(This story is published as part of the auto-generated syndicate wire feed. No editing has been done in the headline or the body by ABP Live.)
