60-year-old was raped, murdered in Mohali. DNA clues lead to serial killer

A Chandigarh court on Tuesday sentenced cab driver Monu Kumar to life imprisonment again for the rape and murder of a 60-year-old woman, in what became the convict’s third conviction on such charges. All three cases in which Monu Kumar (39) suffered conviction are connected not by eyewitness testimony or confession, but by DNA evidence.

The 60-year-old had arrived in Chandigarh from her village in Uttar Pradesh for a religious pilgrimage a few months before she was brutally raped and murdered. She was an Alzheimer’s patient and was staying with her son in Mohali.

On February 27, 2024, she left her home and never returned. The next morning, her body was found in a jungle area near Government School, Sector 54. She was strangled to death. Her body bore multiple blunt force injuries.

The postmortem examination confirmed sexual assault followed by murder. An FIR was registered under Section 302 of the IPC. The accused was unknown. Police began their investigation. On May 6, 2024, Monu Kumar was arrested.

His clothes, discarded in a jungle area of village Dhanas, were recovered. His blood sample, collected on May 8, 2024, was sent to the Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL) for comparative analysis against biological evidence collected from the 60-year-old’s body and clothing.

The forensic examination report, completed by Dr D S Yadav, senior forensic scientist, on August 30, 2024, became the prosecution’s most powerful witness that also eventually led to Monu Kumar’s conviction. This arrest had then led police to solve two more gruesome murders that Monu had committed in the previous 15 years.

“A mother’s love is what is missed,” her son said. “She used to make food and serve us with love, it felt good. I miss her dal-chawal the most. She was calm and collected. She never scolded me. Everybody respected her and we continue to miss her.” The victim’s son and relatives waited through investigation, arrest, forensic examination, chargesheet filing, and months-long court proceedings.

For her family, the wait lasted two and a half years. Even while he stands convicted for three cases of rape and murder, the court did not consider it a “rarest of the rare case”. “The case in hand cannot be classified as a rarest of rare case.

Therefore, it would be difficult to hold that the convict is such a dangerous person that sparing his life would endanger the community,” the order said. Monu was previously convicted on November 27, 2025 for the murder and rape of a 22-year-old MBA student who was found murdered on July 31, 2010.

He was convicted for the second time on August 21 for the rape and murder of a 40-year-old woman who was found dead on January 12, 2022. The author is an intern at The Indian Express