Shalini Thakur told police her stalker was going to kill her. She filed reports. She got a restraining order. She called again and again. On a recent afternoon outside a Sacramento County Panera Bread, the 38-year-old waitress was chased down and fatally shot, allegedly by the same man she had begged authorities to stop.
The suspect, Rohit Rohit, is an illegal immigrant from India who entered the United States through Arizona in August 2023, was arrested by Border Patrol, and was released under the Biden administration's catch-and-release policy, according to the Department of Homeland Security. He had stalked Thakur for months before the shooting, the Daily Mail reported, tracking her movements with an Apple AirTag hidden under her car hood, obtaining a copy of her apartment key, slashing her tires, and making repeated death threats.
Thakur had secured a restraining order against Rohit in May. By late July, she was reporting violations of that order to the Sacramento County Sheriff's Office. Deputies classified the violation as a lower-level misdemeanor rather than a domestic violence offense because Thakur and Rohit had no romantic relationship. And then the system that was supposed to protect her failed at the most basic level: finding him.
Sacramento County Sheriff's deputies made at least two attempts to locate Rohit after Thakur reported the restraining order violation on July 29, the New York Post reported. They never made contact with him.
Lt. Amar Gandhi, a spokesperson for the Sacramento County Sheriff's Office, acknowledged the gap plainly:
"If we made contact with him, yeah, I am certain there would have been an arrest."
That arrest never happened. The restraining order violation sat in a procedural category that apparently did not trigger the kind of urgent manhunt that a domestic violence charge might have. Because California law draws a line between stalking by a stranger and abuse by an intimate partner, Rohit's alleged conduct fell into a classification that carried less enforcement weight, even as his behavior escalated toward violence.
Thakur, who worked as a waitress and had encountered Rohit through his work as a DoorDash driver, spent her final months living in fear of a man the justice system could not seem to reach. The AirTag under her hood meant he could track her in real time. The copied apartment key meant nowhere felt safe. The death threats meant she knew what was coming.
Sudesh Kumari, Thakur's mother, has not held back in her criticism of the agencies that failed her daughter. Her words carry the weight of a woman who watched the system ignore every warning sign her daughter raised.
"She could have been saved. She told police so many times. She called them, but nobody did anything."
Kumari also pointed to the restraining order itself as evidence that the legal system recognized the threat but could not translate paperwork into protection. In a separate statement, she said: "Restraining order after restraining order... police did not protect my daughter."
The restraining order, granted in May, documented a pattern of stalking behavior that had persisted for months. Thakur did what the system asks victims to do. She reported. She sought legal protection. She followed up when that protection was violated. Every step she took was the right one. None of them saved her life.
DHS confirmed that Rohit illegally crossed the southern border through Arizona in August 2023. Border Patrol agents arrested him at the time. Under the Biden administration's policy governing the processing of migrants at the border, Rohit was subsequently released into the interior of the country.
A DHS spokesperson framed the case in stark terms:
"This tragedy would have been completely avoided if it weren't for the Biden administration RELEASING this killer into our country."
White House border czar Tom Homan has seized on the case to criticize California's sanctuary policies, which limit cooperation between state and local law enforcement and federal immigration authorities. Those policies, Fox News reported, are central to the political battle Homan is waging over immigration enforcement in blue states.
California's sanctuary framework means that even when local deputies had probable cause to arrest Rohit on the restraining order violation, any arrest would not have automatically triggered an immigration detainer or notification to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The state's laws are designed to keep local policing separate from federal immigration enforcement. In this case, that separation meant a man who should never have been in the country remained free, unmonitored, and within striking distance of the woman he had threatened to kill.
One of the most troubling details in this case is the way the restraining order violation was classified. Because Thakur and Rohit had no romantic relationship, the violation was treated as a standard misdemeanor rather than a domestic violence offense. That distinction matters enormously in how law enforcement prioritizes cases.
Domestic violence violations of restraining orders often trigger mandatory arrest provisions and can carry enhanced penalties. A misdemeanor violation by a non-intimate stalker, by contrast, may sit lower on the priority list for deputies managing heavy caseloads. The legal system draws a bright line between these categories. For Thakur, the practical result was that her stalker's escalating threats received a lower-tier law enforcement response.
Investigators will need to determine whether the classification itself limited the resources deputies could devote to locating Rohit, or whether other factors contributed to the failure to find him during those two documented attempts. Authorities have not publicly confirmed what specific steps deputies took beyond the two contact attempts, or whether any additional tools, such as electronic monitoring or coordinated searches, were considered.
The timeline of Rohit's alleged conduct reads like a textbook escalation. It began with unwanted contact and progressed to surveillance technology, physical intrusion, property destruction, and explicit threats of lethal violence.
Placing an AirTag on a victim's vehicle represents a level of premeditation and technological sophistication that stalking experts have increasingly flagged as a precursor to physical violence. Obtaining a copy of Thakur's apartment key crossed another threshold entirely, giving Rohit the ability to enter her home at will. Slashing her tires served as both intimidation and a method of controlling her movement. The death threats removed any ambiguity about his intentions.
Each of these acts, taken individually, constituted a criminal offense. Taken together, they formed a pattern that any threat-assessment professional would recognize as high-risk. Thakur recognized it. Her mother recognized it. The restraining order judge recognized it enough to grant the order. The question that will haunt this case is why the enforcement side of the system could not keep pace with the threat.
The Thakur case has landed squarely in the national debate over immigration enforcement and sanctuary policies. For the Trump administration, it represents a concrete example of the human cost of catch-and-release processing at the border. For California officials, it raises uncomfortable questions about whether sanctuary protections, designed to encourage immigrant cooperation with local police, can coexist with public safety when the immigrant in question is an alleged violent predator.
Homan's criticism targets both the federal policy that released Rohit in 2023 and the state policy that insulated him from immigration enforcement after he settled in the Sacramento area. The two layers of policy failure, one federal and one state, created the conditions under which Rohit could remain in the country, find work through a gig-economy platform, fixate on a victim, and allegedly carry out a killing, all without any system catching him in time.
Authorities have not publicly confirmed whether Rohit had any prior criminal history in the United States beyond the border arrest, or whether any agency flagged him as a potential threat before Thakur's reports. Those answers will matter as the case moves through the legal system and the political debate intensifies.
The criminal case against Rohit will proceed through Sacramento County courts. Investigators will need to determine the full scope of his alleged stalking campaign, including whether any additional victims exist and whether any other agencies received complaints about his conduct. The question of how he obtained Thakur's apartment key, whether through a landlord, a locksmith, or some other method, remains unanswered publicly.
For Sudesh Kumari, the legal process offers little comfort. Her daughter did everything right. She reported. She documented. She obtained court protection. She called police when that protection was violated. The system acknowledged the danger on paper and failed to neutralize it in practice.
When a woman follows every step the law provides and still ends up dead outside a Panera Bread, the question is not whether the system failed. The question is how many people knew it was failing and let it happen anyway.
