The Maurice Nagar police claim they know the 19-year-old who killed two Delhi university employees and critically injured two more in their campus flat on September 2 last year. But the catch is that the police have not been able to interrogate him, leave alone, arrest him.

The reason, the police say - the accused is now in Nepal and the extradition process is taking longer than usual - especially, with no one influential enough to pursue the case at the level of the Ministry of Home Affairs. The SHO of Maurice Nagar Police Station says the future of the case is uncertain now.

On the morning of September 3 last year, the police were informed about the incident by the victim's neighbour who said that a man with a bloodied face had been looking out of the window of the house opposite her's. He had even requested her to open the door locked from outside. The police arrived on the scene, broke open the door to find two bleeding men lying in one of the rooms. The injured, Sukhdev and Nar Bahadur, were rushed to hospital. While they were carrying Nar Bahadur on a stretcher, he scribbled this on a piece of paper: ``Maniram's nephew hit me on the head with a hammer''.

There were streams of blood on the blood. The police found the naked body of DU security guard Maniram lying on the floor. The other body, that of library assistant Prem Bahadur, was found in a trunk as investigators were rummaging the flat, four hours after the first body was found. Prem Bahadur's body was slightly decomposed.

Though Nar Bahadur gave the police definite clues and even suggested that the accused Krishna Prassad may be trying to cross the border to Nepal, the investigators could not send a team to the border immediately. The Assistant Commissioner of Police, Nobtu Tshering who was at the spot called up a dozen police stations requesting them to spare a few constables who could be sent to Nepal. None of the Station House Officers he called were ready to spare their men. The police team left for the border six hours later. But the accused managed to get away. Six months later, he is still at large. Today, security guard Nar Bahadur, who survived the attack, lives in constant fear to his life. He is paranoid that accused Krishna Prassad will come back to the Capital and kill him.

According to Nar Bahadur, Prassad was visiting them in the first week of September. He wanted Maniram to get him a job. When he and his flatmates failed to get him the job, he became agitated. Prassad allegedly made off with Rs 60,000 from the flat, before he fleeing to Nepal.

On receiving information about the accused, the Nepal Police had detained Prassad last year. He was released when the Delhi Police failed to get permission from the Ministry of Home Affairs to question him in Nepal. Station House Officer of Maurice Nagar Satish Kumar said: ``We have not been able to trace the accused in Nepal''.