Police detain four local men for questioning

Two weeks after Shobhit Modi, an engineering student who was found murdered near his Vasant Kunj house, Delhi Police have detained four men for questioning.

Two weeks after Shobhit Modi, an engineering student who was found murdered near his Vasant Kunj house, Delhi Police have detained four men for questioning.

HT Image

Police said the four men, one of whom is Shobhit's friend, are residents of Rangpuri Pahadi and they were detained from Mahipalpur on Thursday night.

"A team raided the area around midnight and four men were picked up. Their call record shows that they were in the Vasant Kunj area at the time of incident but were missing since then," said a senior police officer, wishing to remain anonymous.

They were questioned from midnight till early Friday morning and the questioning started again in the afternoon, the officer added.

"While investigating Shobhit's murder case we were probing four angles and involvement of local criminals was one of them. During the process, we questioned over 100 locals and found these four were missing after the incident. On Thursday night we got a tip-off that they had returned and a team was sent to detain them," the officer added.

Police are suspecting Shobhit may have had picked a fight with local criminals while on his way back from DLF Promenade on May 5.

"We are also looking at the robbery angle and the possibility that Shobhit was stopped by criminals but was attacked when he was trying to fled," he said.

A police team went to the crime spot again on Thursday afternoon along with two forensic experts. "His post-mortem report suggests he was killed in a vehicle as the nature of injuries suggests he was sitting when he was attacked. Also, he died barely 2 minutes after the attack which means he was attacked near the gate of C-5 in Vasant Kunj where he was found," the officer added.

Shobhit's family had earlier raised doubts about the police's theory of involvement of local criminals, as Shobhit's belongings were found intact.

"We don't think he was involved in a road rage or was killed in a robbery attempt. Investigators seemed absolutely clueless in spite of piling claims of having left no stone unturned in investigating the matter," said a family source requesting anonymity.

DCP (south) Chhaya Sharma denied any such detention.