There8217;s a suspect, cops haven8217;t traced him for 22 months

NEW DELHI, MARCH 16: Date: May 28, 1997 Place: Nabi Karim Case: British tourist Regina Malca Fleury, 34, was found murdered inside a hote...

NEW DELHI, MARCH 16: Date: May 28, 1997 Place: Nabi Karim Case: British tourist Regina Malca Fleury, 34, was found murdered inside a hotel room. She had been bound, gagged and strangled and her face bore deep gashes.

REGINA Fleury was a regular visitor to India. She collected precious stones from Rajasthan and sold them back home in Southampton, England; and she was typically enamoured by the Oriental mystic. Her second fascination probably proved fatal, when she arrived for her final visit on February 10, 1997. Her killer, the police are convinced, was a young self-proclaimed godman, Baba Vijay Giri, who was also her companion in Delhi and Haridwar.

For the past 22 months the police have been looking for him. And during this period, they have covered most of UP, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and even Mumbai. Sometime in the middle of 1998, they had even given him up for dead. In January this year, the Nabi Karim police claim, they decided to start all over again.

And the motive? 8220;We don8217;t know. Certainly not robbery, she was not carrying any precious stones or lots of cash. The killer was/is probably a psychopath,8221; says one of the 10 investigating officers who have probed the case so far. The policeman was referring to what the suspected murderer had written on the wall in red lipstick: 8220;Maine pachchis murder kiye hain I have committed 25 murders8221;; and it was signed 8220;Papi sinner8221;.

Armed with a portrait prepared on the basis of the description given by the hotel staff, the police went to Haridwar and other pilgrim spots along the Ganga and back to Delhi. Some recalled spotting Giri and Fleury in Gangotri; ditto in Dharamsala. Some more said they saw Giri in August, 1997, in Gangotri three months after the incident. Others directed the police to Baba Vijay Giri8217;s guru, Shambhu Giri. But even Shambhu Giri is missing.8220;One thing is certain. A person by the name of Baba Vijay Giri exists or existed. And he was seen accompanying Fleury in some towns,8221; says a police officer.

On December 12, 1998, a team returned from another round of these towns, once again empty-handed. Since then there have been no more outstation trips. 8220;We are now concentrating on the Akharas places where travelling sadhus usually put up in Delhi. Giri was spotted in one of them in 1997,8221; he says, without commenting on why investigators did not start from close to where it all happened.

Fleury was unmarried. After she died and the police informed British High Commission, the body was handed over to her brother, there has been no communication between her family and the police.

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Hotel employees in the three storey-building in Ramnagar, Nabi Karim, still recall the 8220;odd couple who had lived in room number 3038221; for six days from May 22, 1997. The self-proclaimed godman, aged around 25, had registered himself as Baba Vijay Giri.

8220;I still remember him wearing a T-shirt and black jeans when he left in the morning of May 28. Very unlike Baba. He never returned, but made a weird phone call in the evening. He said he had lost his key to the room and we should tell Fleury that he would be delayed,8221; says an employee who had waited on the Briton and the Baba.

But when he and the manager went to check, they found the room locked. The police broke open the door and found Fleury8217;s body on the bathroom floor. They also found some photographs, shot in Haridwar and other northern UP towns. Fleury was there in most of them, along with a young man, probably Baba Vijay Giri, in some of them. But the young man8217;s face had been deliberately and carefully disfigured in the photographs.