Family of 17-year-old girl murders 27-year-old man in hate crime

Police identified the deceased as Kuldeep Yaduvanshi, who came from Raisina village in Sohna and earned a living by ferrying students to and from a private school in the area. He was abducted from near the school and his body was found on an empty plot behind a private university

A 26-year-old Gujjar man was arrested on Tuesday for tying up and beating to death a 27-year-old man from a scheduled caste (SC) who was in a relationship with his 17-year-old cousin.

Police said that according to an initial probe, all of the victim’s limbs were broken and he sustained numerous bruises and injuries all across his body. (Representative photo/Getty Images)

Police identified the deceased as Kuldeep Yaduvanshi, from Raisina village in Sohna and earned a living by ferrying students to and from a private school in the area. He was abducted from near the school and his body was found on an empty plot behind a private university in Sohna around 2am on Tuesday, police said.

Siddhant Jain, deputy commissioner of police (South), said that a cousin of the girl, was arrested in connection with the murder. They belonged to the Gujjar community, police said. “He has disclosed the names of three to four more relatives involved in the brutal murder. Raids were on to arrest them,” Jain said.

Police said that according to an initial probe, all of the victim’s limbs were broken and he sustained numerous bruises and injuries all across his body.

Investigators said the girl he was in a relationship with was a resident of another district in Haryana. They came in touch a few years ago at another place, where they were both visiting relatives.

Police said the girl’s family members asked Yaduvanshi to stay away from her on multiple occasions, but the two of them continued to remain in touch. The man was murdered for disobeying them and the suspects carried out a recce of the locality on Sunday to gather information about him, they said.

On Monday, Yaduvanshi dropped the students at the school entrance by 8am, as was his daily routine, police said. However, he was abducted soon, as his autorickshaw remained outside the school.

“His family got to know that he was missing when parents of school students contacted them as their wards saw Yaduvanshi’s auto rickshaw outside school when they came out to return home at about 2pm but could not find him even after waiting for long,” a senior police officer said.

In the interim, Yaduvanshi’s mother Shakuntala (goes by a single name), 58, got a call from an unknown number who wanted to verify if she was Yaduvanshi’s mother. Immediately after she confirmed it, the call was disconnected, police said.

The family approached the City Sohna police station and alerted them about the suspected abduction. There was no development until 2am on Tuesday, when a body was found and the family identified it as Yaduvanshi’s.

Abhilaksh Joshi, assistant commissioner of police (Sohna), said: “The victim and the girl met each other at a common place where their relatives lived. The deceased’s family didn’t have any information about the affair, but the girl’s family had got to know about it and threatened Yaduvanshi a couple of times to stay away.”

The ACP said that recently, the girl’s family went through the girl’s phone and found that they were still in touch. “They abducted him, took him to a secluded place in Sanp Ki Nangli in Sohna and brutally assaulted him. Later, they dumped the body in the empty plot behind the university, five kilometres away,” he said.

The body was handed over to the family after an autopsy on Tuesday.

On a complaint from the victim’s mother, an FIR was registered under sections 103(a) (murder), 61 (criminal conspiracy) and 238(a) (disappearance of evidence) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and Section 3(2)(v) of The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act at City Sohna police station on Tuesday.