2 held for killing brother over property dispute, stuffing body in trunk

Two days after the body of a 35-year-old man was found in a trunk in outer Delhi’s Munak canal, police on Tuesday said they had arrested two men — brothers of the victim — and cracked the case. Police said the victim, identified as Dileep Jha, a resident of Raja Vihar in outer Delhi, was strangled by the two men following a dispute related to property.

Police said Jha’s body was found stuffed in a lidless trunk in Munak canal near Haiderpur water treatment plant on Sunday. The body was sent to the mortuary in Baba Saheb Ambedkar hospital

Deputy commissioner of police (outer north) Gaurav Sharma said during preliminary probe it was found that the clothes the victim was wearing, had a logo of a tailor shop named - ‘Yadav & sons tailor Samaypur’ written on it. On this, it was clear that the man was a resident of nearby area. Missing reports from Samaypur Badli police station and other nearby police stations were checked and one of the missing complaints matched the description of the person, whose body we found,” Sharma said.

The complainant, Vivek Jha of Raja Vihar, was called to the police station. He was shown a picture of the body and he identified it as that ofhis elder brother.

“To confirm his claims, other family members including the deceased man’s elder brother Satish Jha was also called. When statements of both the brothers were recorded, they were variations. The two changed statements frequently and their behaviour was suspicious,” Sharma said.

He said, when they questioned the dead man’s wife, she told police that they used to live with the families of his two brothers in a two-storey building. She said her husband had an ongoing property dispute with his brothers due to which she had been living at her parent’s house for the past two months. She also said that last Wednesday her husband told her over phone that he feared for his life, police said.

“On this information, the two brothers were again interrogated and were confronted with information shared by Dileep’s wife. This time they broke down and confessed to have killed their brother. Vivek Jha admitted that on Thursday, they had a quarrel with him. Vivek said Dileep was drunkand taking advantage of that fact, they strangulated him to death, put his body in a small iron trunk and dumped it iin Munak canal. He then got a missing persons complaint registered to avoid suspicion,” the DCP said.