NEW DELHI, May 2: Mukherjee Nagar is to Delhi University what Westwood is to University of California and Los Angeles: a popular hangout for students. But while Westwood is patronised by the `hep-crowd', Mukherjee Nagar is relatively down-market. Students who either could not afford DU hostels or did not make the cut, invariably find the chummeries of Mukherjee Nagar convenient and cheap.The locality has a high concentration of post-partition refugees from Pakistan. Houses, many of them three-storeyed, lie cheek-by-jowl in a labyrinthine network of galis and cul-de-sacs, typical of any shoddily laid-out area.
Mukherjee Nagar has been in the news over the last couple of days for all the wrong reasons. Resident Prem Singh, better-known as Fauji because he is a retired jawan, was arrested yesterday on the suspicion that he had killed five persons -- three of them Delhi University students -- in a maniacal fit of jealousy involving dangerous liaisons between his paramour Sunita and the five youngmen.
Fauji was well-known in the locality as a man not to be tangled with. He ran a real estate agency and is said to have more than held his own in the fiercely competitive world of property-dealing. Though he had apparently carried out the killings with finesse over the last nine months, he did leave a tell-tale signature on all his victims: they were found strangled with identical, thin cords, they were disrobed and their heads shaved. This was a dead giveaway, though the police took that long to piece together the serial-killings.
More than 24 hours after the north district police took Fauji into custody, fear in Mukherjee Nagar is palpable. Students, many of whom are in the midst of their university examinations, who were interviewed by the The Indian Express team, said that the last may not have been heard on Fauji and the trail of blood he left behind over the past nine months. ``There are wild rumours,'' a student at a chummery adjacent to house No. 80 where two of Fauji's victims lived saidominously this afternoon, ``that his boast to the police yesterday that he had planned to eliminate four more students may not be empty.''
Enquiries today revealed that Aditya and Agast, two of the dead boys who were found strangled, with their heads tonsured, were abducted on the night of April 25. They were last known to have been seen alive at around 11 p.m.
``The students who had an affair with Sunita, must have got to know about Fauji's reputation as a dangerous man. It was foolish of them to continue to have links with her after that,'' said one student interviewed this afternoon.
``Many students now feel that it is time to move out of this area,'' said a CA student. ``We are staying on till our exams are over, but after that we are seriously considering moving.''
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
