Bhadreshkumar Patel, charged with wife's murder at Dunkin Donuts, put on FBI's 'Top 10 Most Wanted' list
The FBI has added 26-year-old Bhadreshkumar Chetanbhai Patel, an Indian national, on its top 10 "Most Wanted List" and offered up to $100,000 reward for any information leading to his arrest. The notice has come two years after Patel allegedly killed his wife inside a Dunkin Donuts restaurant. He has been missing since.
The couple, who were visiting their relatives in Hanover, Maryland were working at the Dunkin Dounuts eatery that was owned by them. Bhadreshkumar and his 21-year-old wife Palak were working the night shift on April 12, 2015 when he allegedly stabbed her multiple times with a large knife. Her body was found in the kitchen later that day. The FBI said that Palak had also been beaten brutally.
Investigators believe Palak may have wanted to return to India, but Bhadreshkumar was against the idea.
Bhadreshkumar has been charged with first-and second-degree assault coupled with first-and second-degree murder, as well as a weapons offence in connection with Palak's death. The FBI confirmed that both husband and wife were Dunkin Donuts employees at the time of the crime.
The FBI has warned that Bhadreshkumar Patel should be considered "armed and extremely dangerous."
According to a report in the local newspaper - The Capital Gazette - the FBI even released a video which shows the couple working on the day of Palak's death. The couple is seen walking together and going behind a few racks in the kitchen, away from the camera. After sometime the husband re-emerges. His wife doesn't. He is then seen turning off an oven and leaving the scene.
Special Agent Jonathan Shaffer, who is investigating the case from the FBI's Baltimore Division believes Bhadreshkumar, who is Gujarat, could "either be with distant relatives in the US, or he could have traveled through Canada back to India". "Those are among the plausible options we are exploring," he said.
Bhadreshkumar was last seen taking a hotel shuttle to Newark Penn Station in New Jersey on April 13, 2015 around 10 am.
The police also said that Bhadreshkumar had a visa to be in the US when he first arrived, but it had expired and there was no indication that he was able to legally leave the country. Anne Arundel County police Chief Tim Altomare called the murder a "depraved act of domestic violence."
The FBI said that the "extremely violent nature of the crime allegedly committed by Bhadreshkumar earned him a place on the FBI's Top Ten List." The county police said they believe that the FBI will "certainly locate Bhadreshkumar and provide justice for Palak that her family desperately seeks in order to find closure."
(With inputs from PTI)