India has yet again been left shocked as the sordid details of another gruesome murder made headlines throughout the country; another man has killed his live-in partner. Not only that, he then stuffed the victim’s body in a fridge before marrying another woman. 

Delhi has been appalled by this latest crime, but unfortunately, it is not the first. Just a couple of months back, in a similar murder case a man murdered his girlfriend, chopped her body into little pieces and scattered them in a forest.

Let’s take a look at some of the most dangerous ‘Delhi Crimes’ that over the years have stunned the country and the world: 

2023 | Nikki Yadav-Sahil Gehlot Case

This case, which could be said to be a copycat murder, is pretty similar to the Shraddha Walker case that rocked the Indian capital in 2022. 

On January 10th, Delhi police received a tip-off that a man by the name of Sahil Gehlot had murdered his live-in partner Nikki Yadav. As per the source, the accused also married another girl on the same day he committed the homicide. Upon investigation, police found Nikki Yadav’s body stuffed in a refrigerator in a roadside eatery owned by the accused.

Gehlot was not at the eatery which is located on the outskirts of Delhi’s Mitraon village, but was later nabbed at the nearby Kair village crossing. After pleading his innocence, the man finally confessed to the kill.

Investigation around the motive etc is underway. 

2022 | Shraddha Vikas Walker-Aaftab Amin Poonawala

We have to of course start this macarbe list with the murder that has recently stunned Delhi. 

28-year-old Aaftab Amin Poonawala and 26-year-old Shraddha Vikas Walker reportedly met in India’s financial capital Mumbai before moving to Delhi. The couple who were living together got into a fight on May 18th, harsh words were said and allegedly in a fit of rage Poonawala killed Walker.

Inspired by American crime show Dexter he then proceeded to chop up Walker’s corpse and discarded the body parts across a nearby forest area. The crime came to light recently.

Poonawala is now in police custody as officials look for pieces of Walker’s body.

2012 | Nirbhaya Case

The Nirbhaya case is a gang rape and murder case dating back to 2012. The shameful incident happened on 16th December 2012, whereby Jyoti Singh or Nirbhaya as she came to be known, a 22-year-old physiotherapy intern, was beaten, gang-raped, and tortured in a private bus in which she was travelling with her male friend.

Nirbhaya succumbed to her injuries two days after the assault.

Six men including the driver of the bus took part in the rape and the assault. One of the rapists was a juvenile 17-year-old Mohammed Afroz, who was awarded the maximum sentence that can be given to a juvenile: three years imprisonment in a reform facility.

One of the accused Ram Singh died in police custody on March 11, 2013, and his family allege he was murdered.

Four other accused Pawan Gupta, Vinay Sharma, Akshay Thakur and Mukesh Singh were found guilty of rape and murder on 10 September 2013. On 13 September they were sentenced to death. They were executed by hanging on March 20, 2020.

2008 | Aarushi Talwar Murder

Aarushi Talwar’s murder is another case from Noida, a city that falls in India’s National Capital Region (NCR).

It is actually a double murder case. On the night of 15-16 May 2008, 13-year-old Aarushi and 45-year-old Hemraj Banjade were murdered. 

On 16th May, Aarushi’s body was discovered in her bedroom and initially, it was believed that Hemraj who worked as a house help at her place was the killer. However, the next day his body was also found; it was lying partially decomposed on Aarushi’s house’s terrace. 

Dr Rajesh Talwar and Dr Nupur Talwar then became the primary suspects. Police believed the father, Rajesh, brutally murdered the two victims because they were found in an “objectionable” position.

After a lot of back and forth in November 2013, the parents were convicted of murder and given life imprisonment, however, the sentence was challenged and in 2017 Allahabad High Court acquitted the parents. 

14 years after the murders, the crime still remains a whodunit story, it is still unsolved, and the killer may still be at large.

2006 | Nithari Rape And Killing

Technically the Nithari killings happened not in Delhi, but in Noida, a city in the Indian National Capital Region (NCR). The case dates back to 2006 and is a serial murder case that as per reports, includes elements of sexual assault, necrophilia, and cannibalism. Some even claim that the killings were actually a part of an organ-harvesting racket.

This is one of the most shocking cases that India has seen. As per reports, 31 children all under the age of 18 (most of them ten years or younger) were brutally murdered in the Nithari village area of Noida.

It came to light when in December 2006, families with missing children approached the police after discovering body parts in a drain behind house number D5, Sector-31, Noida. They claimed that earlier too they had sought help but that the police had turned them away.

Excavation of the drain behind the now notorious house revealed 19 skulls. However, police estimate that more than 30 killings were carried out. 

Moninder Singh and his servant Surinder Koli are the two main accused, and both were awarded the death penalty at different points in the case, but neither sentence was carried out. 

1995 | The Tandoor Murders

The Naina Sahani murder case or as it is popularly known the tandoor murder dates back to 1995. 

The accused Sushil Sharma murdered his wife, Naina Sahni, on suspicion of adultery and an extramarital affair with a man named Matloob Karim. On the night of July 2, 1995, Sharma shot and killed his wife Naina.

Then, he tried to dispose of her body by chopping it up and burning it in the tandoor of the restaurant called Baghiya with the help of his friend Keshav Kumar.

However, the duo was unable to properly burn the corpse and police recovered the burnt body parts. 

On 7 November 2003, Sharma was convicted and awarded the death penalty, however, in 2013 the sentence was commuted by the Supreme Court citing no evidence of Sharma chopping his wife’s body.

In October of the same year, a three-judge bench upheld the earlier conviction but reduced it to life imprisonment.

More than 20 years after the crime, in 2018, the Delhi High Court ordered that Sushil Sharma be immediately released from prison.

1978 | The Ranga-Billa case

This case gets its name from the aliases used by the murderers, Kuljeet Singh (alias Ranga Khus) and Jasbir Singh (alias Billa). 

In August of 1978, the two men kidnapped a sibling duo for ransom; 16-year-old Geeta Chopra and 14-year-old Sanjay Chopra. The killers as per reports believed that given that the children were speaking in English, they must belong to a rich family, but on discovering that their father was a naval officer thought that a hefty ransom is out of the question.

Fearing getting caught they took turns raping Geeta before killing the two children. The victims’ bodies in advanced stages of decomposition were discovered by a cowherd in Delhi Ridge on 28 August 1978.

The two killers were arrested on September 9 of that year. In the ensuing trial, both were found guilty and sentenced to death. Their sentence was carried out on 31 January 1982.