On February 11, 2011, someone tipped off the Delhi Police that a travel bag was lying under suspicious circumstances near Delhi Railway Station. The police team rushed to the information and found the dead body of a young woman inside the bag. The corpse had a peacock tattooed on its stomach. There was no other evidence from that bag to get any information about who or where they were from, who appeared to be young women.
The police were completely overwhelmed. After two weeks after the body was found, the media and political leaders started attacking the Delhi Police. Despite the pressure, no one came forward to claim the identity of the young woman. All the police have is a picture of a tattooed peacock. It got a lot of media coverage. They gave the unidentified body a name – “The Girl with the Peacock Tattoo”.
It had been two years since the release of the movie The Girl With Dragon Tattoo, which became a worldwide sensation. The name “The Girl with the Peacock Tattoo” was used by the media to commemorate this.
When no one came after weeks, the police cremated the woman’s body.
She is Neetu Solanki
After the police cremated the body of the woman, a person approached the police the next day. He told the police that if what the media is saying is true, the murdered woman could be his daughter Neetu Solanki. With this, the investigation intensified. The investigation revealed that it was Neetu who was killed.
20-year-old Neetu was a bright young woman with a law degree. The owner of a character full of courage and adventure. According to Neetu’s sister Alka, Neetu was so strong and courageous that no one could conquer her.
On May 1, 2010, Neetu called home from the call center where she was working. Neetu had informed her parents that she was going to Singapore for work.
With the new information received, the police investigation intensified. The investigators rushed after the information received. The police eventually found out that Neetu’s telling her parents that she was going to Singapore was a lie. They found out that Neetu was deeply in love with another young man in the group. Neetu found her love in Raju Gehlot who works in Air India.
Since the same day that Neetu had informed her parents that she was going to Singapore, Raju had also been absent from work. On further investigation, it was found that both had started living together in Delhi. The police got information that the two were together for about a year. According to reports released by some media, it is said that they lived in places like Mumbai and Bengaluru.
Meanwhile, Neetu has not been seen by her family since she said she was going to Singapore. They had no worries about Neetu as he was brave by nature. That is why Neetu’s parents did not respond when news of the discovery of the unidentified body spread.
In the investigation related to the murder, the possibility of the killer being Raju was strong before the police. In the investigation, the investigation team got a strong statement leading to this. After Neetu was killed, the investigation focused on Raju. While searching for him, the investigation team interrogated Naveen Shokeen, a relative of Raju. Finally a statement was obtained from him confirming that the killer was Raju.
Raju had called him in the early morning of February 11 when Neetu was killed. Raju called Naveen Shokeen asking him to help hide Neetu’s body and that he had killed Neetu. Naveen revealed that Raju tied Neetu’s body in a sack and took her in an auto-rickshaw and left her near the railway station as she was told that she was helpless.
Although it was clear that Raju was Neetu’s murderer, the police did not have any evidence leading to it. Raju had to be captured for that. Even after months, the police could not find Raju. Based on the information received, many raids were conducted in places like Delhi, Bengaluru and Mumbai where both lived. Only Raju was hiding somewhere. Finally, the police announced a reward of two lakhs and issued a notice for Raju.
Meanwhile, there were unconfirmed reports that he had crossed into Bangkok and Nepal. Raju’s entire family members are under police surveillance. But he was hiding somewhere out of sight of the police.
As the police chased him from place to place, he eluded them. The police got information that he had been harassing his wife because Neetu had taunted him for losing her job at Air India. The police discovered that he had blackmailed people and extorted money by saying that he had harassed his wife, and had stolen and sold phones. Before that, there was a problem between them once because Raju forged his documents and Neetu burnt them. The police also came to know that he was looking for jobs with these documents in many places. The murder may have happened as a result of all these problems. But the police could not catch him.
Time is counting…
Eight years have passed since Neetu was killed. A few days ago in June 2019, a man was admitted to a private hospital in Gurgaon for severe liver disease. The patient is Rohan Dahian. He was working in an automobile manufacturing company in Gudigaon.
He was admitted to the hospital in a critical condition. He made a phone call from his hospital bed. It was to Raju Gahlot’s house. He reveals that he is Raju. He informed that for so long he was absconding with a fake name of Rohan Dahian with another job. The family handed over the information to the police.
The following Wednesday, the Delhi Police reached the private hospital in Gurgaon with preparations to arrest the accused. The investigating officers had heard the information given by the doctors from there. The man wanted by the police is dead! Neetu’s killer has been called back.
