Murder of delivery executive in Lko: 2.5 months after incident, police yet to recover body
Police are struggling to locate the body of Bharat Kumar, a delivery executive allegedly murdered for his phones, nearly three months after the incident.
Police are yet to trace the body, and make any headway in the death of Bharat Kumar, 32, a delivery executive, almost three months after the incident. Kumar was allegedly stabbed to death and had his body thrown into a canal by men in greed for premium phones.
After the matter came to light in September, the names of three people surfaced in the case, in which police gave a clean chit to one, and the other two accused remain in jail.
The incident happened on September 23, and police began searching for the body from October 1 onwards after one of the accused, according to the police, confessed to the crime and said they threw the body into the Indira Canal close to Lucknow Barabanki border. Almost 2.5 months since the body was dumped, Lucknow police are yet to trace the body. This is despite Lucknow police being a commissionerate with the provision of advanced technical surveillance and manpower.
“The body could not be found despite a lot of effort. The search will be on till it is recovered,” said Bharat Pathak, station-in-charge, Chinhat.
Manoj Kumar, an SI posted at the police station and investigation officer (IO) in the case said, “The SDRF team tried to search for the body continuously for 15 days, but were unable to find it. The search was done till Rae Bareli but in vain. The body was searched even when the canal’s water dried up but there was no trace of the body,” he said.
The brother of the deceased, Prem Kumar said, “I too was involved with the rescue team to try and help trace my brother’s body. But we did not get anything to cremate.”
Police have also failed to recover the murder weapon, which was a laptop wire in the case. “The accused used wire to strangulate the man and used the same wire to tie the bag in which they carried the body and dumped it in the canal,” said the SI.
‘DIFFICULT TO ESTABLISH MURDER SANS BODY’
According to legal experts, to establish a murder, a body and the murder weapon is most crucial. Rohit Kant, a city-based senior advocate, at Lucknow district and session court said, “proving a murder will be difficult here in the absence of evidence like the victim’s body and murder weapon. Police will have to prove abduction under 140 (1) (kidnapping) for conviction in court. As in a lot of cases, the accused destroys the evidence and police will have to prove abduction with intention to kill to establish murder.”
The Chinhat police said that they have enough circumstantial evidence to prove murder and a strong chargesheet is being prepared which will be presented before the court. “We have the victim’s mobile phone recovered from the accused’s possession, CCTV footage which shows them carrying the bag, and call details records (CDR). Besides, both the accused have also confessed to the crime, which is videographed,” said the IO. He further said that the investigation did not find any involvement of Himanshu Kanaujia, hence, his name was not included in the FIR.
“We have a strong case and the chargesheet will be presented before the compilation of three months with strong charges including 103 (1) (murder), 140 (1) (kidnapping), 238 (disappearance of evidence), 309 (4) (loot), 317 (2) (seizure of stolen property),” the IO said.
WHAT IS THE CASE?
A 32-year-old delivery executive, Bharat Kumar Verma, a resident of Sarita Nagar Colony of Chinhat, was strangled by two men when he asked for payment for two smartphones, in Chinhat area of Lucknow on September 23 night.
Following his phone going untraceable, on September 24, his family lodged a missing report in Chinhat police station. One person Akash Sharma, 21 was arrested on October 1 after the matter came to the fore and was sent to jail. The prime accused Gajendra Dubey, 22 went absconding before surrendering at a Barabaki court on October 2.
FAMILY APPROACHES CM
The family of the victim has questioned the police probe done over 2.5 months and have written to the CM, East zone DCP and DGP for intervention in the probe.
Prem Kumar, in a letter to CM, DCP East and UP DGP wrote, “My brother was brutally murdered by accused Gajanand Dubey and his accomplices Akash Sharma, Himanshu Kanaujia and the body has been mysteriously hidden at an unknown place. We lodged an FIR on September 30 at Chinhat Police Station. However, the police did not take appropriate steps to arrest the accused, which caused the accused to flee from Lucknow to Mumbai. From there, suddenly, he surrendered in the district court of Barabanki, giving benefit to the accused by the investigating officer; no action has been taken against Himanshu Kanaujia till now.
“The remand of the accused was also delayed by the police, due to which the accused got enough time to destroy the evidence.”
The family further alleged that the deceased’s belongings like mobile phones delivered mobile phones, the car used by the accused, the bike helmet of the deceased and other items were recovered from the accused, but to date, the police have not been able to recover the body of the deceased.
“Not arresting the accused and allowing them to surrender elsewhere is appropriate. From all these actions, it seems that due to the lack of proper action by the IO, the accused had sufficient time to destroy the evidence. Therefore, it will be appropriate to get a thorough investigation of the above case done by a high-level crime branch, so that the applicant gets justice and the criminals get appropriate punishment,” the family demanded.