Man kills daughter’s stalker, caught while moving body on cart

Police said that the victim, identified as Santosh Kumar Jha, worked as a driver in a courier company in Mahipalpur, and lived with his family some distance away from Surmesh’s house.

A 41-year-old private security guard, who allegedly strangled his 25-year-old former neighbour to death with a cotton towel in a building in south Delhi’s Mahipalpur on Thursday night for reportedly harassing and stalking his 21-year-old daughter, was arrested while allegedly moving the body on a cycle cart to dispose it on Saturday.

Deputy commissioner of police (southwest) Ingit Pratap Singh said a case of murder was registered at the Vasant Kunj North police station.

After the murder, the suspect, Surmesh, who originally hails from Bareilly in Uttar Pradesh and was working as a security guard at a building owned by former Indian cricketer Atul Wassan, allegedly stuffed the body in a sack and hid it in a room at his workplace for nearly 30 hours. Later, a police patrolling team spotted the suspect moving the body on a cycle cart in Mahipalpur’s A-Block around 4am on Saturday and arrested him.

“The guard was employed around three months ago through a private security agency and remained on night duty. I have learnt that the guard killed the man somewhere else but hid the body for two days in a vacant room in the parking space of my building. There are two rooms that we had planned to use for running the kitchen of my hotel that could not be made operational due to the Covid-19 lockdown. As far as the murder case is concerned, we are cooperating with the police and have provided them the CCTV camera footage in which the guard is seen carrying the body on a cycle cart,” said Wassan.

A police officer, who did not want to be named, said, “Although the former cricketer has nothing to do with the murder, we may serve him a notice to join the investigation, if needed, because the body was kept at his property.”

Police said that the victim, identified as Santosh Kumar Jha, worked as a driver in a courier company in Mahipalpur, and lived with his family some distance away from Surmesh’s house. They originally hail from Muzaffarpur in Bihar.

Deputy commissioner of police (southwest) Ingit Pratap Singh said a case of murder was registered at the Vasant Kunj North police station.

Police said Surmesh confessed to the murder and said that Jha had been harassing his daughter for the past three years as he wanted to marry her. He alleged that Jha used to stalk his daughter all the way to her office and other places she visited.

Despite the woman’s family members telling Jha several times that they will never agree to an alliance, he was allegedly constantly pressuring them for marriage, a police officer said, quoting Surmesh’s disclosure statement.

On Thursday evening, the officer said, Jha consumed alcohol with a friend and then, at around 8.30pm, went to Surmesh’s house to once again seek permission for marriage which led to an altercation.

To cool the tempers, Surmesh took him to the vacant room on the ground floor of his building to talk things through. “However, the fight continued and in a fit of rage, Surmesh punched Jha and the latter fell unconscious. Surmesh panicked and strangled Jha to death using his towel, after which he locked the room, and informed his wife about the murder. Later in the night, Surmesh stuffed the body in a sack and transported it to his workplace, which is 200 metres away, on a cycle cart that he had taken from there,” said the officer.

Around 4 am on Saturday, while trying to put Jha’s body on the cycle cart, the sack tore and one of his limbs poked out, the officer said, adding that he went ahead to dispose the body but was spotted by a police patrol team.

Jha’s family was informed about his murder when they reach the police station to file a missing persons complaint on Saturday.