New Delhi, April 24 -- A Delhi Police team, set up to try and close "cold cases", managed to track and arrest an 84-year-old man who had been on the run for nearly four decades after bludgeoning his wife to death in 1986, officials said on Thursday.

The police team placed cellphone numbers linked to the accused's relatives under surveillance and found trails to Nalanda in Bihar, where they learned that the accused - who had since skipped several states and changed multiple aliases - used to visit frequently during festivals.

From there, police traced him to Alipur, where he had been living under the alias Prithvi for the past five days, investigators privy with the case details said.

The accused, Chandra Shekhar Prasad, from Bihar's Na...