COLD CONSPIRACY: The plot to kill Shivani was meticulously planned in advance

The police are rarely known to be coy when it comes to a big catch. Specially if the case happens to be as sensational as the Shivani Bhatnagar murder mystery. But when the Delhi Police picked up Sri Bhagwan Sharma, a Gurgaon-based farmer, from his residence on the outskirts of the capital on July 23, they kept it under wraps. For seven days they interrogated him, without letting the world know that a key figure in the case was in their custody. On July 29, Sri Bhagwan's family filed a habeas corpus petition in the Delhi High Court, following which the police were asked to locate the former and produce him in court before August 1.

Crime

THE ACCUSED RAVI KANT SHARMA, IPS IG (Prisons), Haryana police STATUS: Prime suspect. Lookout notices posted in several states and all exit points THE EXECUTIONER PRADEEP SHARMA Contract Killer STATUS: Arrested Stolen camera and diary evidence point to his involvement

The police did that a day before the deadline and informed the court that Sri Bhagwan was a suspect in the killing of The Indian Express journalist. Shivani was murdered in her east Delhi apartment on the evening of January 23, 1999. Three-and-a-half years later, Sri Bhagwan's was the first arrest that the police had made in the case. But the prize catch would obviously be a man on the run, a senior police officer.

Even before the journalist's murder, rumours were rife in police and media circles in Delhi of an extramarital relationship between Shivani and Ravi Kant Sharma, a Haryana cadre IPS officer currently posted as inspector-general (prisons) in Chandigarh. The affair is said to have begun when as a correspondent of her publication, Shivani, married to Times of India correspondent Rakesh Bhatnagar, covered the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) during the I.K. Gujral regime. Sharma was an officer on special duty there. In late 1998, Shivani delivered a baby boy. Police say as Shivani began to put pressure on Sharma to tie the knot, the officer decided to get rid of her.

ALL QUIET: Sharma has not been at his Panchkula home since August 1

Last Wednesday, police officers raided several places in Himachal Pradesh in search of Sharma. Several teams of the Delhi Police conducted raids at Kasauli, Shimla and Kufri after getting information that Sharma had fled to the hill state. He had evaded arrest for the five days since the capture of Sri Bhagwan and though the police had conducted several search operations at his Chandigarh house, they had no clue about his whereabouts. Astonishingly enough, this officer was proving to be so elusive the Delhi Police was forced to announce a Rs 50,000 reward for anyone providing information leading to his arrest.

Crime

CLOSING IN JANUARY 23, 1999: Shivani Bhatnagar stabbed to death in her Delhi home. All leads point to Sharma but no evidence. DECEMBER 2001: Police question Sharma's associates and examine details of his cell phone calls. JULY 2002: Phone records show involvement of Sri Bhagwan. Police interrogate him, then arrest him. AUGUST 2, 2002: Police arrest Pradeep, the alleged killer. Sharma is on the run. Alert sounded for his arrest.

Sharma has had a chequered career in the civil services. The suave IPS officer is said to have bagged the kind of postings that would be the envy of even well-connected IAS officers. Before his stint in the PMO he was posted in France and at the time of Shivani's death he served as chief vigilance officer at Air-India's Mumbai headquarters. The plum postings, it is said, were a result of the political connections of his father-in-law, a senior Chandigarh-based journalist. His fellow officers, besides envying his postings, had another reason to be jealous of him: his way with women. Before Shivani came into the picture, Sharma is said to have had an affair with a Chandigarh-based journalist who later shifted to London. His problems with Shivani may have something to do with her refusal to take a similar route. Sharma perhaps wished that she too had gone elsewhere, maybe back to her husband, but she would have nothing of it and insisted he married her.

According to the police, the conspiracy was so meticulously planned that Shivani's could have been the perfect murder-but for the numerous cell phone calls between Sharma and Shivani and among Sharma and the other accused. Probing the case was no easy job for them, considering that the two central figures in the case were Shivani's lover Sharma and her husband Rakesh. As investigations continued the police realised there was much that Sharma was trying to hide, though initially, given his connections, they found their hands tied.

But the breakthrough came when the police began to check the phone records of the main players in the mystery. The records showed that in the months before Shivani died, there was a spate of calls between Sharma, who was then posted in Mumbai, and her. Even earlier, while Shivani was in London on a journalism scholarship, Sharma had called her as many as 90 times. Shivani too had called Mumbai from London at least 176 times. Later the calls were mostly one-way-she calling him-though she is said to have got several threatening calls for a few days before her death. Intriguingly, police also have evidence to show that Rakesh Bhatnagar had spoken to his wife's lover no less than 40 times between December 1997 and January 1999, though nothing is known about what transpired.

The police now believe they have a watertight case against Sharma. "Sharma contacted Sri Bhagwan, who in turn got in touch with Satprakash. The two hatched a conspiracy to murder Shivani. Satprakash even used his cell phone to contact the contract killers," says a senior police officer.

Later, taps on Sharma's phone and his conversation with Sri Bhagwan provided valuable pieces of evidence for the police. These coupled with the handwriting in the entry register at Navkunj Society where Shivani lived and was killed have made the police confident that they are close to busting the case. Handwriting experts say the writing is similar to that of another suspect, Pradeep, who was also arrested last week. Pradeep, police say, is one of the killers who went inside the flat and stabbed and then strangulated Shivani to death.

Adding to their optimism was the recovery of a camera from Pradeep. The camera was the only object that was missing from the Bhatnagar household after the murder of Shivani.

Police are currently pursuing leads that Sharma was a frequent visitor to Shivani's house. They are now trying to get the backdated registers of the apartment complex to see whether Sharma had entered the premises sporting a fake identity.

Police have reasons to believe that Sharma had planned the murder well in advance. In December 1998, a full month before Shivani's murder, he had lodged a complaint at the Greater Kailash police station in south Delhi of a kidnap bid on his younger daughter Komal as well as complaints about threats to his family from unknown sources. Police believe these were nothing more than efforts to hoodwink the authorities.

Midway last week, Sharma was still on the run and the ranks of the Delhi Police were out to arrest a man who otherwise in the normal course of duty they would have saluted. The Sharma family, however, dismisses the charges against him. It is a "part of a big political conspiracy to frame him", says his daughter Komal. "Why doesn't the police question other suspects, the politicians? Why have they given a clean chit to Rakesh Bhatnagar?" But at the moment, the top police officer who ought to have used his skills to track down criminals is himself on the run-just like a criminal.