In 2010, the rape-murder of an MBA student shocked the city. An investigation that remained cold for more than a decade. A semen trail that ultimately revived the case.
After more than 15 years, one of Chandigarh’s most gruesome crimes reached its long-awaited conclusion as a local court sentenced life imprisonment to the man who snatched away a promising life.
The convict Monu Kumar, now 39, was a 24-year-old taxi driver when he targeted the 21-year-old woman on July 30, 2010.
She had found him alone sitting on a scooter and talking on the phone near a deserted taxi stand in Sector 38 West. He attacked her from behind with a heavy stone and dragged her into the bushes, where he raped her.
The student was found semi-nude and was taken to PGIMER, Chandigarh, where she was declared brought dead. There were strangulation marks on the neck and there were injuries on the wrist, thigh and back on the body.
“The convict does not deserve any sympathy,” the court of Additional District and Sessions Judge Dr Yashika said while handing down the sentence.
Kumar was convicted under sections 302 (murder) and 376 (rape) of the Indian Penal Code and also fined. Rs 50,000 each for both the offences.
The judgment said, “This court is of the view that the requisite punishment should be awarded to the guilty in order to protect the society as a legitimate response of the collective conscience. In other words it is the obligation of the court towards the society which has reposed faith in the court of law to curb evil.”
The court held that although the case did not fall in the “rarest of the rare” category that warranted the death penalty, it was “a case of its own kind”, where a person was arrested 14 years after the incident with the help of meticulous forensic work by the police and scientists.
According to the police, Kumar was heavily intoxicated when he committed the crime. The charge sheet states that Kumar took two phones of the victim, sold one in an industrial area and threw the other in the forest. He also signed the receipt using the wrong address.
Following his arrest in May 2024, the charge sheet was filed on August 2, 2024 and charges were framed on August 21, 2024. The trial ended in just one year.
Police said Kumar, who studied till class seven, had not even registered for an Aadhaar card to avoid arrest. He worked as an inter-city taxi driver and was mostly out of the city.
A resident of the now-demolished Shahpur Colony in Sector 38 West, he is originally from Uttar Pradesh.
Claim of falsely implicating the accused
The father of two daughters, Kumar separated from his wife in 2011. No one from his family was present during the sentencing.
Speaking to the media outside the court, Kumar said he was innocent and the police had framed him. His lawyer Sunil Kumar Pandey said they would appeal against the verdict in the High Court.
The defense lawyer had argued that there was no direct evidence to convict his client. There were no eyewitnesses, and DNA testing on four of the 26 markers was incomplete.
He also argued that the IMEI number of the mobile phone which Kumar was accused of stealing from the victim was different from that of the mobile phone which he had sold to a shop.
However, the court ruled, “A judge does not preside over a criminal trial merely to see that no innocent person is punished. A judge also presides to see that no guilty person escapes.”
The court also appreciated the efforts of the police team including investigating officer DSP Harditt Singh and SI Mohan Kashyap; And Dr. Sunita, Assistant Director/Scientist, said that they contributed to the society at large by collecting evidence against a person who was absconding for almost 14 years.
When the sentence period was pronounced, the convict prayed for leniency, claiming that he was the sole supporter of his aged mother and had health problems. The prosecution, on the other hand, sought the death penalty, arguing that cases of similar nature were pending against him.
Cold case revived after 14 years through semen trail
After evading arrest for over a decade, Kumar was hanged using semen preserved from the victim’s body. He was arrested in May 2024 after a similar gruesome crime in Maloya reopened an investigation that had remained cold for 14 years.
Forensic analysis concluded that semen samples from the bodies of both the victims – an MBA student and a 40-year-old woman who met the same fate in Maloya area, 2 km away in January 2022 – were from the same man. The second victim was found naked, her mouth gagged with stockings.
Months later, Kumar’s DNA also matched that of semen found on the clothes of a 55-year-old woman who was brutally murdered in Sector 54 on February 27, 2024.
Trial underway in two other murders
The case against Kumar in the case of rape and murder of a woman in Maloya is going on in this court. The hearing of the Sector-54 murder case is going on in the second sessions court. The next hearing of both the cases has been fixed for December 3.
Police officials say that under this life sentence, Kumar will be out within 14 to 15 years, but they will also insist on death penalty in the Maloya rape-murder case.
Since the FIR was filed in 2010, the punishment is in line with the format before the Supreme Court’s 2014 judgment, which specified that life imprisonment means imprisonment till the end of the convict’s natural life.
For parents, life sentence is too little for a ‘repentless’ killer
For the victim’s parents, the punishment given to the culprit does not reflect the gravity and brutality of the crime.
He believes he deserved nothing less than the death penalty, saying that a man of “wholly unrepentant and dangerous mind” should never be allowed back into society.
As the court sentenced life imprisonment to the man who raped and murdered their daughter in 2010, both the parents wept as they recalled the cruelty meted out to their child.
They went through 14 years of silence and fading hope as the case remained unsolved and no leads emerged. Yet he remained steadfast in his belief that one day the truth would come out.
After years of investigative silence, the breakthrough came when a forensic doctor noticed similarities in the DNA between two separate cases and pressured the file to be reopened.
“It felt like a miracle, and at the same time, a shock. We couldn’t understand how two cases could be so similar and ignored the connection for years. But the determination to look again at the evidence gave us our first real path to the truth,” said the victim’s father, now 69.
‘She was strong, but she didn’t get a chance to fight’
The father described his daughter as exceptionally strong. He said, “My daughter was brave and strong. She was a Kabaddi player. If she had a chance, she would have fought. But he attacked her from behind. She didn’t even realize it. He attacked her when she was unconscious. She didn’t even have a moment to save herself.”
The distraught father said, “She was intelligent, strong, full of dreams and determination. She had a future that most students only aspire to. But it all ended in one moment of cruelty.”
‘He showed no remorse’
The family says the convicted killer displayed complete emotional emptiness throughout the trial. “There was nothing visible on his face. Not a single hint of guilt or regret. When the judge asked if he wanted to say anything, he remained silent. He had nothing to say, no apology, no explanation. It was very surprising to see how blank and cold he looked.”
While leaving the court he said that he respects the court’s decision and accepts the verdict.
A policeman’s chance encounter exposes the killer
A chance encounter and the sagacity of a policeman during routine patrolling led to a breakthrough in a 2010 rape-murder case, which the police closed as “untraceable” in 2020.
In 2023, convict Monu Kumar was spotted by now retired Inspector Jaspal Singh near Sector 39 Water Works.
After receiving common forensic leads in two similar rape-murder cases involving an MBA student in 2010 and a 40-year-old woman in Maloya in 2022, the police had started profiling the suspects living around the murder sites, collecting DNA samples of ragpickers, labourers, vegetable vendors and vagrants.
Then Inspector Jaspal, who was out for patrolling, noticed a person who was standing drunk and in a suspicious state. “There was something wrong with his behaviour. I felt he should not be ignored,” Jaspal said.
He was detained under preventive custody and his blood sample was collected inside the lock-up. The police released the man the next day, but kept him under surveillance at his residence in Shahpur Colony, Sector 38.
The DNA report that came seven-eight months later linked Monu Kumar to both the 2010 and 2022 cases. Semen samples preserved from the bodies of both victims matched the DNA from his blood samples. When the police failed to trace him in the first murder, he brazenly targeted the second victim 12 years later.
Armed with scientific evidence, the police arrested Kumar, paving the way for the trial to begin.
Initially, he denied involvement. When confronted with the DNA results, he confessed first to the 2022 murder and then to the 2010 crime, remembering minute details of the scene. Recalling the interrogation, Inspector Jaspal said, “He remembered every detail – the location, the sequence, the weapons, everything. Even after so many years, he had not forgotten a single thing.” On the last day of remand, he confessed to the third murder in Sector 54 in February 2024.
Interestingly, Kumar was interrogated by the then SHO of Maloya police station, Amanjot, in 2010 itself. But he was released due to lack of witness testimony or DNA evidence.
Patterns were so similar that they could not be ignored: CFSL expert
The major leap forward in the investigation came from CFSL scientist Sunita, who was handling the forensic investigation in the 2022 Maloya rape-murder case. After visiting both crime scenes in 2010 and 2022 he immediately realized the similarity.
“The patterns were very close. When I looked at the bite marks and the attack pattern in the 2022 case, something occurred to me. These two did not make sense. I picked up the 2010 file again and studied every detail. It was intuitive. I decided to match the DNA, and the results confirmed it – it was the same man,” said the forensic expert.
