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Delhi’s “hammer man” strikes again

NEW DELHI: Exactly a week after a middle-aged woman was found dead under highly mysterious circumstances in the Capital’s Baljeet Nagar area, a newly married woman was found murdered with her head smashed in the same locality in the early hours of Thursday. Locals allege it to be the handiwork of the dreaded “hammer man” who has been targeting women in the area for well over two years now.

The bizarre murder came to light around 4 a.m. when young Sangeeta’s mother Dhanwata Devi returned home after fetching water.

On hearing some commotion from the room where Sangeeta was sleeping, she went inside and switched on the light. To her utter shock, she found a young man sitting on a chair. In a flash he vanished from the scene.

Dhanwata Devi’s daughter lay on the floor bleeding profusely from the head.

The distraught mother raised an alarm, at which her sons Mohan Lal, Kamlesh, Shrawan and Chandra Prakesh and younger daughter Geeta rushed in. Sangeeta succumbed to her injuries on the spot.

The police, who were called in, found a bloodstained brick at the scene of crime and lifted some fingerprints. Some local residents told the police that they had seen a man fleeing from the area.

In her statement to the police, Sangeeta’s sister Geeta said that she left the room around midnight and went to sleep with her mother as she was feeling cold.

“We are verifying her statement. We have also rounded up five persons for questioning,” said a police officer, adding that the mother of the deceased had told them that she could identify the assailant.

Sangeeta got married about three months ago but had been living with her family. Enquiries by the police revealed that she was earlier engaged to a man from nearby Prem Nagar but the engagement was subsequently broken.

Angry neighbours of the family blamed the police for the spate of murders in the area. They said despite intensifying patrolling and increasing deployment, the police had not been able to trace the “hammer man”.

A week ago, another local resident named Darshana was found dead with a head injury under similar circumstances.

The 46-year-old victim was mentally unsound and had been living alone.

Though the police suspected it to be a case of accident, locals claimed that she was a victim of the “hammer man”.

For the past two years now residents of Baljeet Nagar and nearby Ranjit Nagar and Prem Nagar have been reporting incidents of women being attacked in the early hours by the mysterious “hammer man”.

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