Days after allegedly gunning down his former classmate Ishita Mullik at her Krishnanagar home for rejecting his marriage proposal and snapping ties with him, accused Deshraj Singh was arrested from Nautanwa in Uttar Pradesh, close to the Nepal border.
Deshraj was nabbed on Saturday afternoon by a special team of Krishnanagar police when he was attempting to flee to Nepal. He was flown to Calcutta late on Sunday night and brought to Krishnanagar on Monday morning.
The police did not disclose Deshraj’s arrest for the purposes of the probe.
On Monday, Deshraj was produced in a Krishnanagar court, which remanded him in judicial custody for 14 days. The police plan to take him into custody for interrogation once his identification parade is conducted.
In a parallel development, the police on Sunday arrested Deshraj’s father, Raghvendra Singh, a BSF head constable posted in Jaisalmer, for allegedly aiding his son’s escape.
Raghuvendra is expected to be brought to Krishnanagar on Wednesday.
The arrests mark a breakthrough for the Krishnanagar police, which faced criticism after failing to secure more than 10 of the 24 accused in the earlier murder case of Tamanna Khatun in Kaliganj. In the Tamanna murder case, all accused are allegedly Trinamool workers.
The swift capture of Deshraj is being seen as a major success, despite Ishita’s murder raising uncomfortable questions about law and order in Krishnanagar, particularly because the murder took place in her Manikpara home, an area where top administrative officials reside and the office of the SP is located a stone’s throw away.
On Saturday, the police had disclosed the arrest of Deshraj’s maternal uncle, Kuldeep Singh, who allegedly helped him escape after he shot dead his classmate-turned-girlfriend Ishita, 18, on August 25.
On that afternoon, Deshraj, 19, originally from Deoria near Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh but residing in Jethia-Dharampur of North 24-Parganas for his studies, stormed into Ishita’s residence at Manikpara and shot her in the head thrice, killing her instantly before fleeing.
The police launched a chase within three hours. Deshraj tried to mislead them by abandoning at least two switched-on mobile phones. He was eventually traced to Nautanwa, some 360km from Lucknow.
Krishnanagar SP Amarnath K. told reporters: “After constantly trying to nab Deshraj we were successful a little before he was trying to sneak into Nepal for shelter.”
He said the motive behind the murder was established, but the police were probing the details of Deshraj’ escape route, those who helped him and the source of the
murder weapon.
Investigations revealed that Deshraj had been planning to kill Ishita for nearly six months. A police officer said Ishita’s decision to end their relationship triggered uncontrollable rage in Deshraj, who remained obsessed with her.
Amarnath remarked: “Deshraj is suffering from a sort of toxic masculinity that doesn’t accept rejection.”
According to the police, his obsessive mindset was encouraged by the criminal tendencies of his wider family in Uttar Pradesh. His recent social media post — posing with a pistol and captioning it “dead body soon” — was ignored by relatives.
The SP added: “While escaping from police tracking, Deshraj first disembarked in Ayodhya where some of his relatives gave him shelter and arranged transit with fake Aadhaar and other credentials.”
Police sources confirmed that Deshraj received ample support from his family members, including his father, to flee.
One officer said that Deshraj’s father, after the murder, spontaneously spoke to mediapersons claiming he seldom speaks with his son. “But actually his father arranged fake credentials and provided a new cellphone that Deshraj used to mislead the police,” the officer said.
Cops have planned a reconstruction of the murder with Deshraj at the crime scene.
