Add The California Post on Google Sacramento deputies had probable cause to arrest the illegal migrant who later murdered a California waitress — but said they couldn’t find him before the deadly ambush.
Indian national Rohit Rohit, 22, executed 38-year-old Shalini Thakur on Tuesday outside a Panera Bread in Sacramento.
The Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office said deputies and detectives made at least two attempts to find Rohit after Thakur reported that he had violated a restraining order she obtained against him, but they came up empty.
Thakur said the May 29 order was violated when she believed the man had ordered or delivered groceries to her on July 29.
“If we made contact with him, yeah, I am certain there would have been an arrest,” Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Lt. Amar Gandhi told KCRA. “But again, there was no contact made.”
Deputies also tried to find Rohit at places he was known to frequent. Gandhi acknowledged investigators did not launch a “large-scale manhunt” for the man at the time.
“There’s not going to be a massive, large-scale manhunt for this person,” Gandhi said. “But there is follow-up. There is stuff done.”
The alleged restraining-order violation was considered a lower-level misdemeanor, Gandhi said. Even if Rohit had been arrested, he could have been cited or booked before prosecutors and a judge determined what happened next.
The matter was not classed as domestic violence because the pair had not been involved romantically, the spokesperson said. Gandhi said Thakur described their relationship as being friends.
Rohit met Thakur while she was an IHOP waitress in 2025, and he delivered DoorDash orders from her workplace.
Rohit’s behavior became increasingly disturbing throughout the year, according to the Sacramento sheriff’s office and court documents.
He threatened to kill her and himself on multiple occasions. He placed an Apple AirTag tracking device on her car to monitor her whereabouts, made a copy of her house key without permission, and showed up at her workplace daily. He once slashed her tires and then followed her, offering to change them when she pulled over.
Asked whether the Sheriff’s Office could have done more before Thakur’s killing, Gandhi said no.
“It’s just the sad truth of it all. These cases, they come in every day,” Gandhi said. “These detectives do have stacks of these cases, and they do follow up on these cases literally every day.”
“To say that nothing was done is absolutely incorrect,” Gandhi said.
California’s sanctuary state laws also limited the Sheriff’s Office’s ability to cooperate with federal immigration authorities who could potentially have taken Rohit into custody.
Department of Homeland Security officials arrested Rohit in August 2023 after he crossed into the US at the Arizona border. He was released on an “order of recognizance” during the Biden administration just a month later, and DHS said he remained in the country illegally.
Gandhi acknowledged the limitations of what he called an “imperfect justice system.”
With Thakur and Rohit both dead, the victim’s family is left without justice or their loved one.
“I am alone in this world,” Sudesh Kumari told reporters after her daughter’s death. “Restraining order after restraining order… police did not protect my daughter.”
Sheriff’s officials previously said the quick response from law enforcement prevented Rohit from inflicting more carnage.
“I believe that individual was headed somewhere else to do someone else harm,” Sacramento Sheriff Jim Cooper said.
California Post News: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, YouTube, WhatsApp, LinkedInCalifornia Post Sports Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, XCalifornia Post Opinion California Post Newsletters: Sign up here!California Post App: Download here!Home delivery: Sign up here!Page Six Hollywood: Sign up here!
