America’s ’most wanted’ fugitive arrested in Delhi

Mtoday news

New Delhi, feb 14: On the night of August 8/9, 1989, Mahfuz Huq puffed out a full pack of his favourite Marlboro Lights cigarettes, as he waited outside the residence of Todd Kelley at Hamilton – a town in Steuben County in the Indiana State of the United States.

 

Inside, Kelley was with Christine Mutzfeld, who earlier had an affair with Huq.
Just after Kelley and Mutzfeld left for a drive at around 2:30 am, Huq – seething with anger – broke into the house and waited for his rival in love.

Kelley returned home half-an-hour later and was allegedly stabbed to death by Huq.
The proverbial long arm of the law could not catch up with Huq for almost 22 years. It was however his passion for table tennis that proved to be his undoing and he was caught – not anywhere in the US, but in Delhi.

It might read like a script of a crime-thriller from Hollywood. But it’s true.
Huq, one of America’s ‘Most Wanted’, is indeed in the custody of the Delhi Police now. And the Ministry of External Affairs has already started the process for his extradition to the US.

The Central Bureau of Investigation got the 44-year-old detained by immigration authorities at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport soon after he arrived from Dhaka last Thursday. The Delhi Police later formally arrested him.

Huq is a US citizen. His parents had migrated from Bangladesh to the US long back.
The Superior Court of Steuben County in Indiana issued an arrest warrant against him on August 22, 1989. The Interpol had also issued a red notice on him at the request of the US Government.

According to the CBI, Huq has been living in Bangladesh under fake identities and repeatedly changed his name, date of birth and passport. He was travelling from Dhaka to Delhi on a Bangladeshi passport issued to Asif ul Huq, his latest assumed name.

Huq, now a sports instructor in a school in Dhaka, came to Delhi to take part in a table tennis training camp.

Sources said that the US Embassy in New Delhi had started the process of obtaining necessary legal documents from Steuben County to take forward the extradition process.

India and the US had signed the Extradition Treaty on June 25, 1997.
Popular TV serials like “America’s Most Wanted” and “Unsolved Mysteries” have featured the murder of Kelley and profiled Huq as a fugitive.

According to the Probable Cause Affidavit submitted to the court by Detective L M McClelland of Steuben County Sheriff’s Office, black hairs found at the scene of the murder did not match with the locks of either the victim Kelley or his girlfriend Mutzfeld, but appeared to be consistent – both in colour and length – of Huq’s. The cops also found cigarette butts and an empty pack of Marlboro Lights near the scene of crime.

Huq lived at Angola in Steuben County and worked at CTS Electronics in neighbouring Elkhart. He left from his workplace at 1:15 pm on August 8, 1989 and never returned. He apparently booked a seat on a Mexicana Airlines flight from Chicago to Mexico on August 11, 1989, but did not turn up at the airport, ostensibly to evade arrest. He somehow managed to escape from the US and reached Bangladesh.