Chandigarh Police have finally cracked one of the city’s darkest and longest-running crime mysteries, exposing a serial predator who evaded justice for 14 years. Investigators have linked a string of brutal rape-and-murder cases — all previously treated as isolated incidents — to one perpetrator: Monu Kumar, a 38-year-old taxi driver from Shahpur Colony, Sector 38 West.
For more than a decade, Kumar prowled secluded and forested areas around Chandigarh, stalking vulnerable women late in the evening or during heavy rain, when fewer people were outdoors, and crime scenes were harder to preserve. His pattern remained chillingly consistent: he attacked and overpowered his victims, strangled or bludgeoned them to death, dumped their semi-naked bodies in bushes, and then raped them post-mortem. Each time he vanished without a mobile phone, Aadhaar card, bank trail or any other digital footprint that could lead back to him. His extreme caution — born from fear of leaving biometric or electronic traces — allowed him to escape suspicion year after year.
The case that eventually led investigators to him began on July 30, 2010. Twenty-one-year-old MBA student Neha Ahlawat left home on her scooter to attend English classes. Within hours, her battered and naked body was found in bushes near Karan Taxi Stand, barely 500 metres from her home. She had been raped and strangled. The investigation initially produced only a DNA sample from semen on her clothes, but no suspect emerged. Torrential rain that night washed away crucial physical clues, and despite the issuance of a suspect sketch and multiple probes — including brain mapping and narco-analysis of individuals — the case went cold. In 2020, it was formally marked “untraced.”
The turning point came more than a decade later with a 2022 forensic report in another rape-murder case involving victim Mandeep Kaur. DNA found on her body matched the sample preserved from Neha’s clothes in 2010. For the first time, investigators had proof that both crimes were linked to the same unknown assailant. Focus shifted to the Maloya–Sector 38–Sector 54 belt, an area dotted with taxi stands, and a police hunch emerged that the killer might be someone working in the transport trade.
In late 2023, Chandigarh Police organised a large blood-donation camp for taxi and auto drivers in collaboration with the administration. Behind the scenes, approval had been obtained for covert DNA collection. More than 100 samples were analysed painstakingly by forensic teams. During the same period, Kumar struck again — this time murdering Shanichra Devi near Sector 54, but was unable to rape her due to heavy intoxication. Even so, forensic teams later found traces of semen on her saree.
When the CFSL confirmed that the latest sample matched the DNA from Neha and Mandeep’s cases, the investigation finally had its breakthrough. A team staked out Kumar’s home for days in plain clothes. On May 6, 2024, when he returned from Amritsar, the police moved in and arrested him. He initially denied involvement, but when told that his DNA profile had been matched, he confessed to three murders and rapes in Chandigarh. This time, he had also carried a mobile phone while transporting Shanichra. GPS triangulation placed him precisely at the crime scene — the first time he had ever left a digital trail.
The Special Investigation Team (SIT), led by SSP Kanwardeep Kaur, pieced together the case through technology, forensic science and persistence. Investigators now suspect that Kumar, who frequently drove interstate, may have committed similar crimes elsewhere. Chandigarh Police have already learned that he was once acquitted in a 2009 Himachal Pradesh child rape-murder case due to a lack of evidence.
On Thursday, a Chandigarh district court convicted Monu Kumar in the killing of Neha Ahlawat under charges of rape and murder. Sentencing will be pronounced on November 28, 2025, with life imprisonment or the death penalty on the table. Charges have also been framed in the other two cases, and trials are underway.
For Neha’s family — who spent years pleading for answers and accusing authorities of inaction — the conviction brought overwhelming emotional release. Courtroom witnesses said tears filled the eyes of family members and even moved the presiding judge to cry, marking the first moment of closure in a case that haunted Chandigarh for more than a decade.
