Om Prakash, popularly known as Pasha, was included on the police’s list of the “most wanted offenders” in the Haryana state in northern India.
The former Indian army man, who was wanted for questioning in relation to a robbery and a murder, spent 30 years hiding in plain sight in Uttar Pradesh, a neighboring state. He got a brand-new life there with legal papers, married a local woman, and had three kids with her.
But earlier this week, when police detained the elderly 65-year-old at his home in a slum in the city of Ghaziabad.
Om Prakash, according to the police, had a variety of jobs prior to his detention, including appearing in 28 low-budget local films and driving a truck while traveling to adjacent villages to perform devotional songs on special occasions.
Om Prakash is currently in custody and has not responded to the allegations made against him, but Haryana’s Special Task Force (STF) Sub-Inspector Vivek Kumar, who was a member of the team that arrested Om Prakash, told the BBC that he believes an alleged accomplice was responsible for the 1992 homicide.
Two days after Om Prakash’s arrest made the news, I went looking for his family to get their perspective on the incident and to hear what they would have to say in support of him.
It took me three and a half hours to find them in the large Harbans Nagar slum, where houses are not sequentially numbered and small labyrinthine bylanes are unregistered.
I got to know Rajkumari, his wife of 25 years, and his two oldest kids, a boy who is 21 and a daughter who is 14.
Rajkumari takes out a Hindi newspaper from beneath the bed and shows it to her husband. She claims they are still in disbelief, that they were unaware of his “supposed criminal background,” and that they are still processing the information.
However, if I had sought out Om Prakash’s family to defend him, it would have been a fruitless endeavor because they had nothing positive to say about him.
They also charge him with betraying them. Rajkumari claims, “I married him in 1997, not knowing that he was married and had a family in Haryana.
What is Om Prakash accused of, and who is he?
Om Prakash was a truck driver for the Indian army’s Signal Corps for 12 years when he was discharged in 1988 for being missing from duty for four years, according to Mr. Kumar, a native of Naraina village in Haryana’s Panipat district.
Om Prakash, according to Mr. Kumar, had multiple run-ins with the law before the alleged murder. He was detained and then released on bond in several of the regions where the crimes were committed, according to authorities.
According to Mr. Kumar, Om Prakash and another guy attempted to steal a bike-riding man in January 1992.
“They stabbed the man when he resisted. They left their scooter and rushed away when they spotted a bunch of locals coming near them “He asserts.
The second individual, according to Mr. Kumar, was apprehended and imprisoned for “seven to eight years” before being freed on bail.
But Om Prakash disappeared, and the investigation quickly became unproductive. He was listed as a “proclaimed offender” by the police, and his file was left untouched.
Police said he has admitted to them since his detention that he sought refuge in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh temples for the first year following the purported murder.
He returned to northern India a year later, but this time, he didn’t go back home; instead, he settled 180 kilometers (112 miles) away in Ghaziabad, where he was able to get a job driving trucks.
According to Rajkumari, who wed him in 1997, he’s known as Bajrang Bali or Bajrangi in his community because of a store he had in the 1990s that sold and lent video cassette recorders (VCRs) of movies. As a nod to his time in the military, he is often referred to as “Fauji Tau,” or soldier uncle.
Since 2007, he has also performed in minor roles in regional Hindi-language movies, mouthing lines of speech and dancing to songs as a village chief, a villain, or even a police officer. Takrav, one of the films, has received 7.6 million YouTube views. Several more million people have watched movie clips.
Mr. Kumar claims that the man “got a brand-new set of official papers, such as a voter card and an Aadhaar card.”
However, according to authorities, Om Prakash made one critical mistake that proved to be the end of him: all of his new documents had both his and his father’s true identities.
