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Cops crack death of 9 migrants in Warangal
Telangana police on Monday claimed to have cracked the mystery behind the death of nine migrant workers, including six of the same family, whose bodies were retrieved
Telangana police on Monday claimed to have cracked the mystery behind the death of nine migrant workers, including six of the same family, whose bodies were retrieved from an abandoned well on the outskirts of Warangal town last week.
Warangal city police commissioner V Ravinder said all nine had been murdered by another migrant worker, who first laced their food with sleeping pills and dumped their bodies into the well to cover up another murder he had committed in March. The alleged killer was identified as Sanjay Kumar Yadav (24) from Bihar.
On Friday, the police recovered nine bodies from a well at Gorrekunta village on the outskirts of Warangal. The dead were identified as Mohammed Maqsood (55), his wife Nisha (48), sons Shahabad Alam (21) and Sohail Alam (18), daughter Bushra (20) and her three-year-old son Shoaib. The family belonged to West Bengal,
The other three victims were identified as Sriram (21) and Shyam (22), both from Bihar, and Shakil (30) from Tripura.
All the adults were working in a burlap bag manufacturing unit in Geesugonda block of Warangal and had been staying in the same company premises since the enforcement of the coronavirus disease lockdown on March 25.
The police initially thought they had committed mass suicide owing to financial constraints or some other family reasons before tracing the crime to Yadav.
According to the police commissioner, Yadav had a relationship with Rafiqa (37), a divorcee sister-in-law of Maqsood. Rafiqa, along with her three children, started living with Yadav separately. But she later realised that Yadav also was trapping her teenaged elder daughter. in a relationship, and threatened to expose him, Ravinder said.
Yadav promised to marry Rafiqa and left for West Bengal along with her on a train on March 6. During their journey, he gave her buttermilk laced with sedatives and after she went to sleep, strangulated her and threw her body out of the train. He quietly returned to Warangal.
When Maqsood grew suspicious and started questioning Yadav, threatening to complain to the police, Yadav decided to kill him and his family. He bought sleeping pills from a medical shop and on May 20, attended a birthday party hosted by Maqsood for his son where he mixed the pills in the food. The family members, the two Bihar men and the lone Tripura man ate the food and slipped into a deep sleep.
“After ensuring that all of them were unconscious, Yadav dragged all the nine to the well one after the other and threw them into it between 12.30 am and 5 am on Thursday,” Ravinder said.
