The police on Saturday said that they have arrested Radhika Tanwar?s killer, Ram Singh alias Vijay, four days after he shot dead the 20-year-old Delhi University student in front of her college in broad daylight.
Vijay, described as a 25-year-old psychopath who stalked his victim for over three years, was sent to four-days-police custody in Delhi after his overnight arrest in Mumbai.
The man was identified on Friday following investigations by the police as they released a sketch of the suspect and grilled two of his accomplices who sheltered him and helped him escape to Mumbai after the incident.
The two men, Ashraf and Tabrez, were taken in on Friday night from Sitapur in Uttar Pradesh.
Vijay?s arrest came after Delhi police launched one of its biggest manhunts in recent times.
No less than 19 special teams were formed to track down the killer, headed by Deputy Commissioner of Police H G S Dhaliwal after the incident sparked widespread outrage drawing flak on Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit herself.
Vijay, a tailor who first came to Delhi in 2005, shot Radhika Tanwar, a second year student of Ramlal Anand College in Delhi University?s South Campus near her college on Tuesday.
Delhi Police Commissioner B K Gupta said that Vijay, whom he described as a psycopath obsessed with following women, shot down the victim with a locally-made .315 bore pistol after she refused to talk to him on Mar 5.
The weapon was recovered from the house of one his friends, Shekhu, in south Delhi’s Pilanji village.
Vijay had first set his sights on on Radhika in 2007. After he was roughed up on two occasions by locals in Naraina Vihar, feeling humiliated, he left for Mumbai.
But he occasionally returned and started stalking the girl. One-and-a-half months ago he came back to Delhi again and followed Radhika around in buses and auto rickshaws.
Even though she did not talk about him to her parents, Radhika is said to have mentioned the stalker to her friends.
After she finally confronted and snubbed him on Saturday, a humiliated Vijay sought to kill her. With a weapon that he acquired from a friend in Gurgaon, he shot Radhika on Tuesday from point blank range and fled.
Nobody tried to stop him.
He then trashed the weapon with Shekhu, met with Ashraf and Tabrez and eventually left Delhi for Mumbai from the Gurgaon railway station. He was apprehended from Tagore Nagar in Vikhroli area of northeast Mumbai at 11 pm Friday.
The incident, which took place on International Women?s Day, caused widespread outrage. Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, came under attack for lack of safety of women in the capital.
She said the blame lay with the public to some extent, pointing out that no witness had come forward to help the case even though the footbridge over which Radhika was killed was crowded at the time of the murder.
Dikshit, defending the police after initially venting ire on the force, appealed to the public to be more pro-active to fight crime.