New Delhi: Delhi Police have rearrested a notorious serial killer known as ‘Doctor Death’, who had been on the run since August 2023 after jumping parole. The accused, Devender Sharma, 67, was apprehended from an ashram in Dausa, Rajasthan, where he had been living under a false identity as a priest.
A former Ayurveda practitioner with a BAMS degree, Sharma was convicted in multiple murder cases across Delhi, Haryana, and Rajasthan. He had been serving a life sentence at Tihar Jail and had even received the death penalty from a Gurgaon court. His arrest followed a six-month-long manhunt led by the Delhi Police Crime Branch, covering cities like Jaipur, Aligarh, Agra, Prayagraj, and Delhi.
According to Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime Branch) Aditya Gautam, Sharma gained notoriety in the early 2000s for murdering taxi and truck drivers. He would lure them with fake bookings, kill them, sell their vehicles in the grey market, and dump the bodies into crocodile-infested waters of the Hazara Canal in Uttar Pradesh to destroy evidence. He is suspected of being involved in over 50 killings.
Sharma’s criminal career began after a failed gas dealership deal in 1994, leading him to set up a fake agency. He later ran a massive illegal kidney transplant racket between 1998 and 2004, facilitating over 125 illicit operations with help from medical professionals and brokers.
First arrested in 2004, Sharma had previously absconded while on parole in 2020 and remained at large for seven months before being caught. In June 2023, he was granted another parole, after which he vanished again.
Police say Sharma’s long criminal history includes at least 27 cases of murder, kidnapping, and robbery. His latest capture ends yet another chapter in one of India’s most chilling criminal sagas.