Three businessmen found dead inside car, pulled out of pond in UP's Sitapur

Station house officer (SHO) Atul Choudhary said the bodies have been sent for postmortem examination and all aspects of the incident were being investigated

Three businessmen were found dead inside a hatchback car which was pulled out of a pond in Uttar Pradesh’s Sitapur district late Monday night, police said on Tuesday.

Police found two bodies on the front seats and a third on the rear seat. (Representative file photo)

Station house officer (SHO) Atul Choudhary said the bodies have been sent for postmortem examination and all aspects of the incident were being investigated.

“The exact cause of death will be known only after the postmortem report comes in,” he said.

He stated that the incident came to light around 1:30am when some villagers returning home from duty noticed something floating in the pond. When they flashed a torch towards it, they spotted the roof of a car and immediately alerted the police.

A police team reached the spot and got the car pulled out with the help of a crane. On opening the vehicle, police found two bodies on the front seats and a third on the rear seat.

The deceased were identified as Rakesh Chaurasia (50), Satish Kumar (40), residents of Sidhauli, and Ramendra (62), a resident of Atraulia, police said. Documents recovered from near the bodies helped establish their identities.

According to police, Rakesh’s son Mohan had met with an accident in Bahraich on Sunday. Rakesh left for Bahraich around 4am on Monday with his friends Ramendra and Satish to visit his injured son. The car was reportedly captured by a CCTV camera installed at Kanduni factory around 5am. The three men spoke to their families on Monday evening while returning, but contact with them was subsequently lost.

When they failed to return home by late evening and their phones remained unreachable, their families approached the police and reported them missing. Relatives joined the police in searching for the trio throughout the day, but their whereabouts remained unknown until the late-night recovery.

Police are examining CCTV footage to trace the car’s movements and establish how it entered the pond. Preliminary findings suggest that the three men may have drowned, but investigators said the circumstances surrounding the incident were still being examined.