Ghaziabad: Two arrested for beheading man for occult ritual

A man from Delhi “hired” two of his friends to murder a man and behead him so that he can use the head to perform tantric rituals

Nearly two months after the headless body of a man was found near a drain on the Loni-Bhopura Road, police investigators on Friday said they have solved the case involving a web of deception, a gruesome murder, and a brutal beheading – all done by three men with the intention of carrying out an occult ritual they were convinced would help them get rich.

On June 22, Ghaziabad police officials had uncovered an unidentified headless body from near a drain at Loni-Bhopra road under jurisdiction of Tila Morh police station in Ghaziabad. (Sakib Ali/HT Photo)

Police officers said that a man from Delhi “hired” two of his friends to murder a man and behead him so that he can use the head to perform tantric rituals.

The main conspirator of the brutal murder was identified by Ghaziabad Police as 28-year-old Vikas Parmatma, an e-rickshaw driver from Tahirpur in east Delhi who is originally from Motihari in Bihar.

Parmatma remains absconding, police officers said.

He had hired two of his friends – Vikas Gupta, 24, who worked as an auto driver and shared a house with Parmatma, and Dhananjaya Kumar, 25, who was employed as a household cook, both from Muzaffarpur in Bihar. Police said that Dhananjaya would often visit the house of his two friends at Tahirpur.

Both of them have been arrested, police said.

On June 22, Ghaziabad police officials uncovered an unidentified headless body from near a drain at Loni-Bhopra road under jurisdiction of Tila Morh police station in Ghaziabad. A case of murder was filed by the police against unidentified suspects.

Police officials said they believe that Parmatma allegedly lured his two friends to get the head of a man for performing tantric rituals and black magic, and promised them ₹5 lakh in return.

“Parmatma believed that sacrificing and offering a human head during a trantik ritual would make him wealthy. He tasked Dhananjaya to search for a man. On June 15, Dhananjaya zeroed-in on a 29-year-old Raju Kumar Sah from Motihari, Bihar. Sah worked at a local eatery near Kamla Market in Delhi. His parents had died about 15 years ago. As per plan, Dhananjaya started offering him drinks every day and became friendly. On the night of June 21, he took the victim to Parmatma’s house in Tahirpur,” said Siddharth Gautam, ACP of Shalimar Garden circle.

There, on the intervening night of June 21 and June 22, the three suspects strangled and hanged victim Raju, who was under influence of alcohol, to a ceiling fan. Later, Gupta took all of them along with the dead body to the Loni-Bhopra Road in Ghaziabad in his autorickshaw.

“There, they stopped the auto near a drain around 2.20am on June 22. Parmatma then cut the victim’s head off with knives while the two suspects held the body. Later, Parmatma kept the head in a bucket and all of them drove back to Tahirpur.They had switched off auto’s headlights after reaching the incident site and drove it back to Delhi without turning them on,” ACP Gautam said.

“For next five days, Parmatma carefully pulled out the skin, eye, ear etc, in order to get the skull for tantric rituals. The two arrested suspects said that Parmatma showed no remorse and would also play with eyeballs in his hands. On the sixth day after murder, Parmatma told the two suspects that the skull was broken and thus useless for the ritual. Later, he told them that he disposed of the skull in a drain near GTB Hospital, Delhi,” the ACP added.

Police investigators said that they got a breakthrough in the case from a CCTV installed on a residential high-rise near Loni-Bhopra Road. While things were not clear in CCTV footage due to darkness, investigators found that the rear of the auto, which stopped at the beheading site, had two triangle-shaped reflectors on it.

“Our teams started to follow the route of the suspect auto and upon further scanning of CCTVs on route to Delhi, we found that the auto disappeared into the lanes of Tahirpur and could not be traced further. Several police teams started ground-level work to trace such auto. A major breakthrough came on August 15 when our teams traced the owner of the auto. The owner told us that he had leased his auto to four people to drive. Vikas Gupta was the fourth driver and he was driving it recently. Our teams picked up Gupta and he was questioned. His revelation also led to the arrest of Dhananjaya, while Parmatma went absconding,” ACP added.

Nimish Patil, DCP of trans-Hindon zone, said that teams are trying to trace Parmatma.

“The victim was killed in Parmatma’s flat in Delhi and later they cut off his head in Ghaziabad and fled leaving the rest of the body behind. The head is yet to be recovered and a search is on to trace it at the location told by suspects,” DCP added.

The police said that the suspects were booked for murder with common intention and destruction of evidence.