School bus staff who killed colleague held after 17yr chase

Gurgaon: Police last week arrested a 48-year-old school bus conductor, who had been on the run for 17 years, from Uttarakhand’s Bageshwar for allegedly bludgeoning to death a colleague with an iron rod.

The conductor Kamal Singh Mehta was sent to judicial remand on Sunday.

The case was filed in 2007, when Kamal was working as a bus conductor for Rishi Public School in Gurgaon’s Sector 31.

At the time, he was living on the premises of the school campus along with colleagues Nagender Singh of Fatehpur, and Rakshapal of Raebareli, UP.

According to the complaint by another school staffer Dayaram, the incident took place in the early hours of Sept 13, 2007.

Kamal allegedly attacked Nagender and Rakshapal with an iron rod over a “grudge”, Dayaram said.

“When I went to sleep at 10pm on Sept 12, Nagender, Kamal and Rakshakpal were consuming liquor on the school premises. After midnight, I heard some noise and came out of the room. I found Nagender leaning against the wall near the school's main gate in an unconscious condition. He was bleeding. I saw Kamal and Rakshakpal jumping over the compound wall. I opened the gate and found Rakshakpal lying outside the school, also with injuries. Kamal bore grudge against Nagender and Rakshakpal about the usage of bathroom. He attacked them due to personal grudge and fled from the school,” Dayaram told police.

Nagender succumbed to his injuries soon after, and Rakshapal was treated at a hospital. A case was filed at the Sector 40 station and Kamal was booked for murder under IPC Section 302.

He had been on the run since, and police had made at least 15 attempts to arrest him over the years.

A crime branch team under inspector Naveen Kumar of Sector 40 police station decided to send some cops to camp at Kamal’s hometown in Uttarakhand’s Devalchaura village earlier this month.

The inspector said that Kamal’s parents had died but his family members still lived there. “They might have known of his whereabouts, but they didn’t cooperate with the investigation. So, we activated our network of local informants,” the inspector said.

Police also started keeping track of call records of those who may be in touch with Kamal.

“Our team was alerted that Kamal was living in a rented house in Bageshwar town with his wife and two children,” the inspector added. A four-member team headed by SI Sanjay Kumar of the crime branch went to Bageshwar on April 26 and detained Kamal from his house. He was produced before a court in the city on April 27 and sent to judicial remand.

Kamal, police said, confessed to killing Nagender.

He told cops that he never went back to his hometown, anticipating that he could get caught there.

Instead, he went to Himachal Pradesh and worked as a cargo van driver in Nalagarh till 2016. “In 2016, he married a woman from Bageshwar and they now have two children. Kamal did not tell his wife about the crime he had committed in Gurgaon,” a crime branch officer said.

After marriage, Kamal purchased a cargo van and kept working, barely staying in touch with his family.