It was 2016. Pramod Jha, 60, a self-styled godman, thought that if he gave a go-ahead to his daughter to marry a man from a different caste, his wife and son would likely cut ties with him. His wife Kiran, son Durgesh and daughter-in-law Komal were fed up with Pramod's erratic behaviour. He would pick fights with Kiran and would routinely accuse her of having an affair with her brother-in-law, who owned the flat in Devli in South Delhi that the family lived in. But Pramod went ahead and told his daughter Roma that she could marry Vinay. The wedding broke the family. Kiran and Durgesh cut ties with him. Pramod left Delhi and went to his village in Bihar, where he joined an ashram. Nine years later, police said, Pramod returned to Delhi to reconcile with his wife, and when she refused, hacked her to death on August 6. Since 2016, when Kiran separated from Pramod, she was living with Durgesh and her family in Delhi’s Neb Sarai. Pramod was living as an ascetic in his village of Jamalpur in Bihar. “He had first come to Delhi 25 years ago and worked as a guard in Delhi. He then got into religious preaching and became a self-styled godman,” a police officer said. In Jamalpur, Pramod was living with his ailing mother, but she died in May this year, a police officer said. Kiran went for her mother-in-law’s last rites where she met Pramod after several years. He wanted to reconcile, but still doubted her fidelity. She was unwilling. He followed Kiran to Delhi after the funeral, armed with a hammer concealed in his backpack, a police officer said. "On June 31, he travelled on the same train from Munger in Bihar to Delhi as Kiran. His daughter took him to the house in Devli where her mother and brother lived. A heated argument erupted between the accused and his wife over her alleged extra-marital affair," Ankit Chauhan, Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP), South, had said. Hours after the argument, Pramod woke up at 4 am on August 6. He saw his wife sleeping and hacked her to death with the hammer he had brought along while she was asleep. According to the police, after the murder, Pramod draped himself in white dhoti and kurta, and fled the scene. The police circulated lookout posters across the city to nab him. “From CCTV footage, we found that Pramod fled around midnight on August 6, dressed like a sadhu. The team followed his movements via multiple CCTV cameras, tracing his route. He used auto-rickshaws, took a lift on a two-wheeler, and travelled some distance on foot across Badarpur, Jaitpur, Moladband, Meethapur, and Harinagar areas,” DCP Chauhan said. The breakthrough came after a five-day search when the head priest at a Pitampura-based ashram saw the poster with Pramod's picture and recognised him. “The head of an ashram at Pitampura revealed that a man matching Pramod’s description, who was referred by a disciple from Bihar, was staying at their Qutubgarh branch. Immediately, a team led by Inspector Pawan conducted a raid and arrested Pramod Jha,” DCP Chauhan said. “Pramod was associated with the Bihar branch of the same ashram. He had called an associate of his from the ashram in Bihar, who had previously lived in Qutubgarh ashram. Through his reference, he managed to get a stay,” a police officer said.
