Panipat/Ghaziabad: It took 100 police searches over 30 years in 4 Indian states to finally catch hold of 65-year-old Om Prakash, alias Pasha—the most-wanted man in a 1992 murder case. But by then, lot had happened. Pasha had built a new life, acted in 28 local UP films, gone on pilgrimage tours, raised three children and even become a grandfather.
On the eve of 1 August, when dozens of policemen of Haryana’s Special Task Force (STF) stormed his home in Ghaziabad’s Harbans Nagar, neighbours were taken aback – our friendly neighbour? A killer?
Over the years, Pasha had played many roles in movies – a village head, a policeman, and a saint. But one identity that he could not escape was that of a murderer. The arrest wasn’t smooth. The police had to snare him with lies.
“We got his current address from his native village in Haryana. We had already made up a story when we knocked on his door at 9 pm that night. We didn’t want the public to create a scene and disrupt the arrest. We briefed Pasha that his truck manager had accused him of stealing documents. ‘He is waiting at the local police station. Come with us’,” said sub-inspector Vivek Kumar, a member of Gurugram STF.
Pasha bought it.
“But I have already paid from my salary for the misplaced documents. Let’s face that liar,” a furious Pasha argued. He picked up his slippers and left with the policemen. They were barely 50 metres away from the police vehicle when Pasha realised what was happening.
“You are not here for the manager. You are here for that murder,” he told the police.
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The three “thugs” who robbed bikes and scooters
For Haryana’s STF team, this was the final nail in disposing off one of their oldest and most stubborn cases.
As Pasha spends his days in Bhiwani jail, the police have started working on the chargesheet and the STF has moved on to a new file. His family in Ghaziabad is now busy connecting “dots” to make sense of his past and their present.
At Samalkha Police Station, everyone knows Pasha as a history-sheeter. A red file titled “FIR No 119 to 166, 1990” bears witness to his past.
Police documents say that Pasha was a former Indian Army man who served between 1984 and 1988. After the Army dismissed him for being absent on duty, he returned home to join hands with petty criminals Dulichand and Ashok Kumar. Together, the gang of three robbers would travel to different places in Haryana to rob motorcycles and scooters – a decade when these were still a big deal.
“Back in the ’90s, police raids were common for us,” Naraina village resident Mahipal recounted.
It was an exhausting cat-and-mouse chase between the police and the bike thieves for some years.
According to official records, they were arrested and chargesheeted in multiple cases but the court disposed off all robbery cases because the witnesses either turned hostile or didn’t appear.
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The murder case
Pasha and his partners-in-crime didn’t just stop at thefts. One thing led to another and soon Pasha found himself in deeper trouble, something he could not hustle his way out of.
“After securing bail in robbery cases, Pasha started a new life and opened a repairing shop. But old habits die hard. One day, he along with another man spotted a man travelling on bike. The duo tried to rob the bike, but the man resisted. They stabbed the man with a knife. But before they could steal the bike and run away, villagers came running,” sub-inspector Vivek Kumar recalled.
Pasha and the man abandoned the bike and the wounded man, and fled. The villagers took the man to a hospital where he was declared dead. An FIR was filed at the Sadar Bhiwani Police station in January 1992. This was a turning point in Pasha’s life of crime. The police, too, started taking their hunt more seriously. Bhiwani Police successfully arrested the co-accused in the ’90s itself and filed a chargesheet.
“The other man was sentenced to seven years in jail and was later released. But Pasha was never caught,” Vivek Kumar added. Bhiwani Police declared Pasha “most wanted” with a reward of Rs 25,000 in 2020. But Pasha had disappeared into thin air.
Pasha disappears
The villagers claim that the three robbers disappeared from Naraina in 1997.
“Dulichand left the village on 4 May 1997 and never returned back. We have declared him dead. The same year, Ashok fled the village to settle in a distant city,” 60-year-old Mahendra Singh Chhoker, their contemporary, said.
But there is mystery around the disappearance of Pasha. Some believe he left in 2000, some claim he left in 1992, while his brother Prem says that he left in 1997.
“We only got to know that he is alive when we saw the news about his arrest from Ghaziabad. All these years, we have been telling different police teams that he may be dead or disappeared,” Rajkumar, the village head, said.
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Pasha becomes an actor
After fleeing his village, Pasha tried to fashion a new life and identity for himself in a new city. He reached Ghaziabad’s Harbans Nagar and opened a VCR shop. Here he met Rajkumari who was a divorced woman and owned a small house that she built with her alimony. She worked in a sewing factory in Noida. For a long time, Rajkumari was in the dark about Pasha’s life – where he was from, his first marriage, and his children.
“I only got to know about his first marriage when he brought his son. But by then I had two children with him and it was too late to leave. But our relationship was never the same again,” Rajkumari told ThePrint.
However, he would always casually mention some robberies in the past. A motorcycle here, a scooter there. So, she wasn’t really surprised when he was arrested for a 90s’ robbery case in early 2000 and sent to Panipat Jail.
“Some neighbours and I helped him secure a bail too,” she said.
Pasha took Rajkumari to visit his native village Naraina twice and introduced her to his brother Prem and four of his sisters.
“Even his sisters came to stay with us during my deliveries. But none of them ever talked about what he did in the past,” she said regrettably. And nobody talked about the murder.
In 2007, Pasha married off his first son and disappeared. Only to return in 2014.
“I asked him why have you come now. He said he was in jail, his nails were painted blue,” Rajkumari said.
After returning to Harbans Nagar, Pasha acted in local films such as Takrav, Dabang Chhora UP Ka, and Jhatka.
“He was fond of singing. When he got to know that some low-budget films were being shot on the outskirts of Ghaziabad, he went to the set to land himself a job as a labourer or a helper. But he did some jugaad and got small roles,” Vivek Kumar said. Pasha has played a policeman, a village ‘mukhiya’ and even a saint in these films.
Some of the films are now available on YouTube with over a million views. While Takrav has 76 lakh views, Jhatka has been watched over 3.5 lakh times. The storyline of the films is usually set in feudal villages where a young man falls in love with a woman. Sonotek, a Haryanvi music company, bought rights to Jhatka in 2013 and uploaded it on their YouTube channel.
“We are not the makers. So, we don’t have any idea about how Pasha got into these films. These are pretty old,” Ankit Vij, a Sonotek associate clarified.
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A disposed file
According to police officials, each Haryana district has listed two to three such most-wanted criminals.
“If Haryana has 22 districts, we technically have more than 60 most-wanted lists,” Vivek Kumar said.
“Police teams who had visited Naraina village may have believed the stories of disappearance. But we did 12 searches to finally get a tip-off from a neighbour who said that Pasha lives in Ghaziabad and visited Naraina four years ago.”
But all the chase for nearly three decades may just prove futile if Pasha is not convicted. Therein lies the rub. The police know there is a lack of evidence and witnesses from 1997. But the more important message, according to officials, is that no one can escape the law.
Pasha’s family can now finally understand more than ever the reasons and patterns behind his anxious behaviour.
“Now I know why he would disappear from time to time, go on Kanwar Yatras, and take up driving jobs. He was running from himself,” Rajkumari said after some introspection.
(Edited by Neera Majumdar)