35 Years on the Run: The Incredible Arrest of a Delhi Murderer Who Thought He Was Safe
New Delhi, April 22, 2026 — It took 35 years, a blurry 14-year-old photograph, a basic keypad mobile phone, and a brilliantly executed psychological trick to finally bring a proclaimed offender to justice.
In a massive breakthrough for the Delhi Police Crime Branch, authorities have arrested 62-year-old Chhavi Lal Verma (alias Chhabbi Lal), who had been on the run since brutally murdering his landlady during a robbery attempt in East Delhi in August 1991.
The Arrest: A Shout Near a Transformer
The decades-long manhunt culminated on the evening of April 10 outside a four-storey commercial building near the regional passport office in Ludhiana, Punjab.
A dedicated team from the Crime Branch’s Inter-State Cell, operating under the guidance of ACP Ramesh Chander and DCP Aditya Gautam, had tracked a suspicious phone number to the location. Having waited for six hours without making a direct call—fearing it would spook their target—the plainclothes officers spotted a slim, 62-year-old man smoking a beedi near a shop. His physique matched the blurry, 14-year-old photograph they had in their possession.
When the man pulled out a keypad phone and pocketed it, the team quietly trailed him on foot. As the suspect stopped to look at a roadside transformer, an officer suddenly shouted, “Chhabbi Lal, come here.” Reflexively, the man turned around to answer to his real name. The police team immediately swooped in and arrested him, ending his three-and-a-half-decade run from the law.
The 1991 Trilokpuri Murder
The horrific crime dates back to the early hours of August 2, 1991. Verma, then a 27-year-old working at a curtain shop, was living as a tenant in West Vinod Nagar, East Delhi.
Believing his landlady, Geeta, possessed a substantial amount of cash since her husband worked abroad, Verma armed himself with a sharp-edged chopper and attacked her with the intention of robbery. When Geeta and her teenage son, Montu, resisted, Verma repeatedly stabbed them.
Geeta sustained fatal stab wounds to her neck and succumbed to her injuries at the Lok Nayak Jai Prakash (LNJP) Hospital. Her son survived despite severe facial stab wounds. While local police easily identified the tenant as the killer, the lack of modern surveillance and tenant verification systems in the 90s allowed Verma to vanish into the night. He was officially declared a proclaimed offender by a Delhi court in 1996.
A Life in the Shadows
During his interrogation, Verma detailed his astonishing cross-country escape, revealing how he managed to stay entirely off the radar:
Kolkata & Mumbai: He first fled to Kolkata for six months before moving to Mumbai’s Dharavi slums, working as a daily-wage laborer.
Nagpur: Upon learning that Delhi Police had raided his native home in Sultanpur, UP, he fled to Nagpur and worked in an orange orchard.
Goa: He later shifted to Goa, working in various hotels.
Punjab: Here, he met a businessman who offered him a job at a Ludhiana garment mill. For the last 14 years, Verma had been working as a caretaker-cum-guard for Rs 15,000 a month, living in a small barsati room on the terrace.
The Fatal Mistake
Believing he had successfully outrun his past, Verma recently procured a basic keypad mobile phone to occasionally contact his relatives.
Six months ago, the Crime Branch reopened the cold case and noticed a specific number repeatedly calling his family members. Technical analysis confirmed the number was active on a non-smartphone device. Tracing the cell tower location to Ludhiana, the police finally closed the net around a man who thought his crimes had been long forgotten.
