A 38-year-old California woman who filed restraining orders, reported death threats, and begged police for help was chased down and executed in broad daylight by the illegal immigrant who had been stalking her, a man federal authorities say the Biden administration released into the country.
Shalini Thakur was walking near a Panera Bread on Howe Avenue in Sacramento on September 8, just before 3:00 p.m., when 22-year-old Rohit Rohit approached her at a shopping mall and, in the words of Sacramento County Sheriff's Office Lieutenant Amar Gandhi, "began to accost her." What followed, captured on surveillance video now released by the sheriff's office, was a killing that laid bare every failure, immigration enforcement, local policing, and a restraining order that existed only on paper.
Thakur tried to run. Rohit chased her down, pulled a firearm, and shot her multiple times. She fell to the sidewalk. He stood over her and shot her in the head at close range. Then he fled in a vehicle. Deputies tracked the car, and when they caught up, Rohit was dead from what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Her mother, Kumari Thakur, had spoken with her daughter by phone less than an hour before the shooting. They had planned to talk again in fifteen minutes. That call never came. Shalini Thakur was Kumari's only child. Her father had died two years earlier.
Months of stalking, a restraining order, and no arrest
Homicide detectives pieced together a pattern of harassment stretching back months. As early as January, Thakur discovered an Apple AirTag that Rohit had planted under the hood of her car to track her movements. He deflated her tires and then followed her to work, offering to help, a tactic designed to force contact. At one point, he obtained a copy of her apartment key and entered her home on Sierra Boulevard while she was sleeping. When confronted, Rohit claimed the next day that he had entered as a "welfare check" after she did not respond to his messages.
Thakur did what the system tells victims to do. She went to court and obtained a restraining order against Rohit. In July, he breached it, dropping off random grocery items at her front door, a move that signaled he still knew exactly where she lived and could reach her whenever he chose.
The New York Post reported that Sacramento County deputies had probable cause to arrest Rohit after Thakur reported the restraining order violation, but they never found him. Deputies made at least two attempts to locate Rohit and failed to make contact. Lieutenant Gandhi acknowledged the gap plainly:
"If we made contact with him, yeah, I am certain there would have been an arrest."
That arrest never happened. Two months later, Thakur was dead on a Sacramento sidewalk. The case is a grim reminder that protective orders mean nothing without enforcement, a problem that has surfaced in other California killings tied to domestic violence and stalking.
Rohit entered illegally in 2023 and was released, DHS says
Rohit Rohit, an Indian national, illegally entered the United States through Arizona in August 2023. U.S. Border Patrol arrested him. The Department of Homeland Security says the Biden administration then released him into the country. DHS did not specify the legal mechanism, whether it was parole, a notice to appear, or some other release, but a department spokesman left no ambiguity about who he held responsible.
"This illegal alien from India harassed, stalked, and then killed a 38-year-old woman in California, and then took his own life when police caught up to him. This tragedy would have been completely avoided if it weren't for the Biden Administration RELEASING this killer into our country."
The spokesman went further, calling out sanctuary policies by name. Fox News reported DHS's pointed criticism of California's laws limiting local law enforcement cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
"Sanctuary politicians must put an end to reckless policies that play Russian roulette with American lives. Our thoughts and prayers are with the victim and her family."
A DHS spokesperson elaborated on the enforcement problem in a separate statement to the Daily Mail, noting that "seven of the top 10 safest cities in the United States cooperate with ICE" and that when local politicians block that cooperation, federal officers "have to have a more visible presence so that we can find and apprehend the criminals let out of jails and back into communities."
No information in the available reporting indicates whether any deportation or removal proceeding was ever initiated against Rohit after his 2023 arrest. That gap matters. An illegal immigrant arrested at the border, released, and never removed went on to stalk and kill an American woman. The system did not merely fail at one point, it failed at every point. It is a pattern that has played out in other states where illegal immigrants have been charged with killing women.
DoorDash says Rohit passed a background check with a Social Security number
Rohit worked as a DoorDash delivery driver, a job that gave him mobility, flexible hours, and a reason to be in residential neighborhoods at all hours. Sources told the Daily Mail that Rohit passed DoorDash's background screening, conducted by a company called Checkr, by providing a Social Security number. Whether that number was legitimately issued or fraudulent remains unclear.
DoorDash issued a statement expressing condolences and emphasizing its "zero tolerance for violence or harassment of any kind." The company said it is "fully cooperating with the Sacramento County Sheriff's Office" in the investigation. DoorDash also noted that Rohit had not completed a delivery in more than six weeks before the shooting and was not active on the platform on September 8.
That timeline raises its own questions. If Rohit had stopped working for weeks, what was he doing? Lieutenant Gandhi described Rohit's behavior in the months before the killing as "increasingly alarming." The stalking did not taper off. It escalated, from digital tracking, to tire-slashing, to breaking into Thakur's home, to violating a court order, and finally to murder in a public parking lot in the middle of the afternoon.
A mother's grief and a system that offered only paperwork
Kumari Thakur told KCRA 3 that her daughter had gone to police repeatedly. The Fox News account included Kumari's blunt assessment: "She could have been saved. She told police so many times. She called them, but nobody did anything." Kumari described sending WhatsApp messages to her daughter after the shooting, still hoping for a reply.
"I am alone in this world."
Friends and family set up a GoFundMe page describing Thakur as "a caring, loving, selfless, and generous young woman who gave so much of herself to others." They wrote that she was "always willing to support people in need" and that "her presence mattered deeply to the people who knew and loved her." The Sacramento County Sheriff's Office has asked anyone with information to contact homicide detectives at 916-874-5115.
Violent crimes in California continue to draw scrutiny over whether local authorities and state policies are doing enough to protect residents. Investigations into violent deaths across the state have raised similar concerns about response times and enforcement gaps.
The open questions in this case are not minor. Did any agency attempt to deport Rohit after Border Patrol arrested him? Did local deputies exhaust every tool to find him after the restraining order violation? Did California's sanctuary framework prevent a federal detainer that might have taken him off the street? Those answers matter, not for the debate, but for the next woman who files a restraining order and waits for the system to do its job.
Cold cases and long investigations sometimes deliver justice years after the fact, as recent DNA breakthroughs have shown. Shalini Thakur's family will not have that wait. They already know who killed her. What they do not have, and what no one has offered, is an explanation for why every institution that could have stopped him chose not to.
Shalini Thakur followed every rule. She reported the stalking, got the restraining order, and called the police. The system gave her paperwork. Her stalker gave her no chance. That is the failure, and until someone in Sacramento or Washington owns it, it will happen again.
