New Delhi: Ending a nearly three-decade game of hide-and-seek, the Delhi Police crime branch has captured Rajinder Bairagi, a fugitive wanted for the 1998 murder of Haryana Police personnel Jai Bhagwan. Police also claimed to have cracked two attempted murder cases that had remained unsolved since 1997.A former kabaddi player-turned-criminal, Bairagi’s journey into crime began decades earlier in Haryana’s Sonipat, where his involvement in competitive sports brought him into contact with local criminal networks, according to special CP (crime) HGS Dhaliwal. That path culminated in the deadly May 1998 wedding shooting in Saiyan Khera village, where Bairagi and five associates fired indiscriminately following a heated dispute, leaving Jai Bhagwan dead and another individual critically wounded.Though arrested shortly after, Bairagi staged a dramatic breakout on Feb 14, 1999, escaping UP Police custody at Gannaur railway station while fully restrained in handcuffs during a court transit from Ghaziabad Jail. From there, he vanished.For 28 years, Bairagi managed to evade justice. He initially spent a year teaching physical education in Mumbai’s Colaba before reinventing himself as “Rajender Singh Yadav” in Mungaoli, in Madhya Pradesh’s Ashok Nagar district.Over two decades, Bairagi built a quiet, respectable life, marrying an auxiliary nurse at the local govt hospital and raising two children. He meticulously constructed a fresh identity, seamlessly integrating into the local fabric, securing complete sets of forged official identity documents, including a domicile certificate, driving licence, voter ID, PAN card and local credentials.Alongside his property business, he operated a small private clinic, where residents knew him casually as “Dr Jhatka”. To the outside world, he was simply a family man living alongside his wife and their two children, completely detached from his violent history.His elaborate cover finally unravelled when a team led by DCP Chander Singh started probing two attempted murder cases which had gone cold. One of the cases, dating back to June 1997, was registered at Janakpuri police station, and involved a brutal knife attack in Uttam Nagar, for which Bairagi was declared a proclaimed offender by Rohini courts in 2008.As the team dug deeper into his background, they uncovered the high-profile nature of his past crimes. Tracking down a fugitive so deeply embedded in a fake persona required a combination of traditional field operations and modern forensics. Cops developed ground intelligence and used technical surveillance and digital footprint analysis. Together, these confirmed his location, verified his daily routine and mapped his exact movements in MP.With the target confirmed, a police team, led by inspector Sanjay Kaushik and comprising SI Deepak Kumar and others, conducted a raid in Mungaoli and nabbed Bairagi.
