Hire taxi, murder driver, sell car in grey market — this serial killer then fed victims to crocodiles to erase evidence

A team reached the spot and found both of them critically injured but alive. They quickly shifted them to Lal Bahadur Shastri Hospital, where one of them — a cab driver — was declared dead on arrival. The other injured man, the passenger of the cab, survived. A case of murder and attempted murder was subsequently registered.

When the police spoke to the survivor, they were confused. He said they had been given ‘ladoos’ laced with sedatives and then strangled, officers privy to the case said.

The motive wasn’t clear.

Eventually, the probe led the police to two accused, Dhirendra Singh Tomar and Dilip Negi. Once Tomar and Negi were in the police net, the fog started to clear. Police unearthed a gang of hardened criminals who would hire a cab, murder the driver, dump his body — only to steal the vehicle and sell it in the grey market.

But two more accused — Ajay Lamba and Dheeraj — couldn’t be nabbed. The police declared them proclaimed offenders and filed the chargesheet. On October 1, 2007, Tomar and Negi were sentenced to rigorous life imprisonment.

Three years later, on November 3, 2010, Tomar was released on a month-long parole. He had been asked to surrender on December 2 — he vanished.

With leads drying up, the case files gathered dust in cold storage.

After 15 long years, a special team of the Crime Branch was tasked with digging through old files to look at the unresolved cases — including the cab driver’s murder.

This team operated from the Crime Branch office at R K Puram. On the ground floor of the three-storey building, where almirahs stacked with old files sat on either side of the corridor, is the room of Inspector Rakesh Sharma (48).

A 2008-batch officer with around 26 years of service, Sharma heads the team of 15.

The team has a specific task: trace proclaimed offenders and parole jumpers, who have stayed at large for years.

Since January, this team has been working meticulously, reviving dead leads and slowly trapping absconding criminals. Their hard work did pay dividends.

Dr Death.

They nabbed four criminals — Dhirender Singh Tomar, Ajay Lamba, Devender Sharma and Rajender alias Raju — who were missing for a long time, in different operations.

“Initially, we had no idea that these four had anything in common. During the investigation, we found that they belonged to two different gangs,” Inspector Sharma says.

“There was another shocking detail — these two gangs had identical modus operandi. They would hire a cab, kill the driver, dump the body, and then sell the car. They were also active around the same period — 1999-2000.”

Inspector Anuj Kumar, who’s part of the team, says, “Our operations are dependent on the documents. Unless we scan through every file related to a case, we are unable to go after the absconding criminals. Our clues are always hidden in those files.”

“And accessing these documents isn’t easy… We need everything… case files, identity cards, bank details, voter ID. One document leads to another.”

Devender Sharma alias ‘Doctor Death’. He and his gang also targeted cab drivers, and they would dump the bodies in the crocodile-infested Hazra Canal in Kasganj (Express Photo)

Inspector Sharma says they began with four cases involving parole jumpers and proclaimed offenders.

Looking for a killer

First on their list was Tomar.

“We were scanning records shared by jail authorities when we stumbled upon Tomar’s case,” says Sharma.

As per police records, Tomar’s last address was Sikanderpur in Uttar Pradesh’s Bareilly. Jail records showed that his ‘brother’, ‘Rajkumar’, used to visit him at Tihar. His Aadhaar card, a copy of which was part of the records, mentioned the Sikanderpur address.

In January, a team of four headed there undercover to track down the brother — only to discover that both his name and address were fictitious.

“Our team member, SI Yatender Malik, along with a few other officials, asked around in the area. They didn’t find anything,” says ACP Umesh Barthwal, who monitored these operations.

Finally, they had a breakthrough.

The team got to know about a wedding in the village and decided to try their luck there. They subtly made queries and showed the Aadhaar copy — and a few people identified the man in the photo on the card. It was none other than Dheeraj — he was not only part of the Tomar gang, he was also Tomar’s brother.

Despite the fresh leads, the police team was unable to locate Dheeraj or Tomar. Shifting their strategy, they began monitoring the bank account of Tomar’s mother, who received a monthly pension as the widow of a retired Armyman. While scanning the account activity, investigators noticed that the pension was consistently withdrawn from the same ATM — usually a day or two after being credited.

The police then accessed CCTV footage from the ATM and spotted Tomar making the withdrawals. That’s when they began a wait-and-watch operation.

The team followed Tomar. They found that he had assumed a new identity as ‘Rajan’ and was living with his wife. He had been working as a driver at a relative’s house in Ekta Nagar.

Finally, they nabbed Tomar on March 24. “We were in Bareilly for about four months,’’ says Sharma.

Tomar was first arrested on March 24, 2001, and sentenced to life in 2005 by the Karkardooma court. He got parole on November 3, 2011.

It was during Tomar’s questioning that the police team understood how the gang, which operated in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, and Uttarakhand, committed crimes. Tomar said he was 19 years old when he committed those crimes. He is 46 now.

“As for the Delhi case, Tomar said they hired a taxi from Jaipur to Delhi. Then, he and his associates attacked the driver and co-passenger — who survived — stole the vehicle, and sold it in Nepal. He also admitted to his involvement in three other cases of murder, robbery, and abduction in Almora, Haldwani, and Lohaghat in Uttarakhand. In each of those cases, he said, their modus operandi was the same,” police say.
Lamba’s case, however, came with a twist. He was arrested by Sharma’s team in the first week of July — not through an elaborate chase, but moments after stepping out of Patiala House Court, where he had appeared for a hearing in a 2021 narcotics case registered by the Sagarpur police.

According to Inspector Sharma, Lamba had managed to evade capture for nearly 25 years by changing his identity documents and address. This prevented the Southwest District Police from realising he was a proclaimed offender.

Dheeraj, meanwhile, is still at large.

Negi was arrested between 2007 and 2008, convicted in 2010 for life, and is currently lodged in jail in Delhi.

On the trail of ‘Doctor Death’

The Crime Branch team was up for another shocking case. Buried inside the case files were the details of a hardened criminal, Devender Sharma alias ‘Doctor Death’.

The modus operandi mirrored that of Tomar and gang — Devender too targeted taxi drivers and committed these murders between 2002 and 2004. “The similarities were stark,” Inspector Sharma acknowledges. “But once we dug a bit deeper, we realised this was a different gang.”

Devender’s story begins in Bandikui, Rajasthan, where he practiced medicine at the Janta Clinic for 11 years. In 1994, he was scammed of his entire life savings — Rs 11 lakh — after he attempted to open a gas dealership. Following the setback, he returned to his hometown of Aligarh, where he began operating a fake gas agency.

“In Aligarh, he began targeting truck drivers — killing them to steal gas cylinders they were transporting from different suppliers to Aligarh,” an officer privy to the investigation says. “He would then dump the bodies in a river.”

Between 1998 and 2004, police said he was involved in a kidney transplant racket, arranging more than 125 transplants across Delhi, Haryana, and Rajasthan. “He ran that racket with the help of another doctor and several middlemen. He told us that he earned Rs 5 to 7 lakh per transplant,” an officer says.

It was during this period, in 2002, that he formed his own criminal gang. For the next two years, he told police, he was allegedly involved in the abduction and murder of numerous taxi drivers.

Officers say he would hire a taxi from Delhi, kill the driver, and dump the body in the crocodile-infested Hazra Canal in Kasganj. His gang would sell the stolen taxis in the grey market for Rs 20,000 to Rs 25,000 each.

Devender was arrested in 2004 and sentenced to life in seven cases of kidnapping and murdering taxi drivers between 2002 and 2004.

His crimes were so gruesome that his wife and children abandoned him after the details of his killings were revealed, say police.

In January 2020, he was released from Jaipur Central jail on parole based on good behaviour. He never returned.

A few months later, while gathering information on “wanted criminals in the area”, a Delhi Police Inspector got information that he was living in Baprola with his second wife. Devender had started a property dealership but was caught trying to sell a disputed building in Connaught Place. He was arrested and put in Tihar Jail this time.

On June 9, 2023, he was again granted parole for two months — and vanished.

Searching for Devender was a difficult task for the team. “We spent more than three months moving around places in Rajasthan, Mumbai, Prayagraj and Aligarh,” says DCP (Crime Branch) Aditya Gautam.

“One of our team members, who was from Rajasthan, did a lot of research to trace him. When we finally found him, it was a surprise. He was hiding in plain sight, masquerading as a priest at an Ashram in Dausa,” says Gautam.

The team member then pretended to be an avid follower and kept an eye on him. “Devender was finally arrested on May 19,” the officer says.

“He had admitted to killing more than 50 people when he was questioned previously. We were unable to recover the bodies of all of his victims. This is why he was sentenced for the murder of seven of his victims only. He was given a life sentence,” an officer says.

His arrest led police to another man who had been on the run for 21 years.

During questioning, Devender was asked about his aide, Rajender. Despite his name surfacing in seven murders across Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh, he had managed to evade police.

Sharma then revealed that Rajender had been using an alias Rajua. He had been convicted of only one murder by the gang in Jaipur in 2007.

On June 15, police nabbed Rajender from Aligarh.

Apart from the painstaking investigations carried out by the Crime Branch team — including the generation of human intelligence — a key factor in tracking and arresting absconding hardened criminals has been the Inter-Operable Criminal Justice System (ICJS). This online database allows police forces across the country to upload and access details of proclaimed offenders and parole jumpers.

Devesh Chandra Srivastava, Special Commissioner of Police (Crime), says, “ICJS is immensely helpful for field officers in verifying details from police, jail, and court records. It often plays a crucial role in locating proclaimed offenders, parole jumpers, and other absconders. The system enables us to cross-check facts and provides critical leads that contribute to the successful apprehension of criminals.”

He adds that till June this year, 1,265 POs have been arrested, out of which 165 were involved in heinous cases.