For nearly a month, an Agra police team camped in Delhi’s Nangloi area, discreetly monitoring 50-year-old Sahdev Yadav, a shooting instructor in a school.
Their suspicion: Yadav could be Samuel, from Agra’s Shahganj area who had carried out a robbery of Rs 1.75 lakh in 2002.
Samuel, who was wanted in two criminal cases – robbery and illegal confinement of a woman – and carried a reward of Rs 50,000, had successfully evaded arrest for nearly a quarter of a century by drifting between different cities, repeatedly changing his name and adopting new identities.
With no recent photographs available and his whereabouts unknown, police turned to technology for help. Using a photograph of him, dating back to 2001, the police employed Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools to generate multiple age-progressed images showing how Samuel might appear more than two decades later.
The digitally enhanced images were then circulated through various databases and social media channels.
Eventually, officers identified a man bearing a striking resemblance to the AI-generated profile: Sahdev Yadav, a shooting instructor at a school.
Soon, a team of UP Police was dispatched to Delhi to monitor him.
“From the very start, his (Yadav’s) movement was suspicious. He used to leave home in Nangloi’s Prem Nagar area on a motorbike and park it somewhere far, before boarding a bus to school. His wife was also employed at the same school. She was a taekwondo teacher.”
According to police, as they started digging deeper into Yadav’s life, they found surprisingly little official paperwork linking him to his identity. The only document they were able to trace in Yadav’s name was a driving licence.
Police also scrutinised the people who regularly met him, hoping to uncover details about his past.
“Most of the people in his social circle knew little about his background,” a police officer, involved in the probe, said.
A surprise discovery
The breakthrough came when the probe team found a traffic challan issued against the vehicle used by Yadav.
“We were surprised to find that the vehicle was registered under the name of Poonam, whose family had accused Samuel in 2001 of kidnapping her. The same woman was now married to Yadav,” said the officer.
“The more we observed the couple, the more convinced we became that he Yadav was none other than Samuel, the person we were looking for,” the officer added.
The robbery
In 2002, three unidentified men robbed Rs 1.75 lakh from a man in the Lohamandi area of Agra. Within months of the robbery, on November 8, 2002, police made the first arrest – Deepak Shahi, alias Sonu. The second accused – Amit alias Monu — was arrested four years later, on November 17, 2006. However, the third accused, Samuel, remained at large.
In the meantime, the court convicted Deepak and Amit and sentenced them to four years of prison.
While probing the robbery case, police found that Samuel was earlier booked for illegal confinement of a woman, Poonam, at Hariparwat police station. The complainant was Poonam’s family.
“It seems that the woman remained with him and is believed to have been living alongside him during the years he spent on the run,” said a police officer.
Back to 2026
Following the discovery that the owner of the motorbike was Poonam, the suspicion of the police that the man they were tracking could indeed be the long-absconding fugitive strengthened.
“For nearly a month, a police team remained in Delhi, discreetly monitoring his daily routine and activities. The more we observed, the more convinced we became that he was the person we were looking for,” said the officer.
On May 2, the team went to his Prem Nagar home and detained him.
“The accused had been absconding for the past 25 years. Using a combination of Artificial Intelligence and traditional intelligence-gathering methods, we were able to trace and arrest him… During questioning, he admitted to his involvement in the robbery crime,” said Deputy Commissioner of Police (Agra) Syed Ali Abbas.
Police believe that with Samuel’s arrest, they have closed one of the district’s longest-running pursuits, though many questions remain unanswered.
“Further inquiries are underway to reconstruct Samuel’s movements and his activities in all these years he spent on the run, and to determine whether he was involved in any other criminal activities while living under different identities,” said the officer, adding that Samuel has been sent to judicial custody by the court.
Samuel alias Sahdev Yadav; the age-rendered AI generated images of Samuel that helped the police to identify and nab him.
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