With the arrest of three persons, police in the Durg district of Chhattisgarh claimed to have cracked over a two-month-old murder case of an engineer, whose skeleton was found last month, an official said on Saturday.
The trio had strangulated the victim, Shivang Chandrakar (25), a resident of village Vidyut Nagar in the district, on December 6 last year over a land dispute, the official said.
The three accused have been identified as former panchayat member Ashok Deshmukh (31), Vickky alias Monu Deshmukh (20) and Basant Kumar (24), all residents of Chandkhuri village of Durg, senior superintendent of police B N Meena said.
"With extensive investigation carried out by six separate police teams in the last 65 days and after examination of the video footages from around 200 cameras, police succeeded in cracking the mysterious murder of the engineer," the SSP said.
"There was a dispute between Ashok and Chandrakar's family over an issue of land lease. As a fallout, Ashok hatched a conspiracy with Vickky and Basant to abduct Chandrakar and extort Rs 30 lakh as ransom before killing him. As part of their plan, they closely kept an eye on his movements and on December 6 last year, while trying to abduct him, they strangulated Chandrakar to death," Meena added.
Meanwhile, as Chandrakar did not return home, his family members lodged a missing person's report at Pulgaon police station the next day, the official added.
"The search for the missing engineer ended on a tragic note after a skeleton was recovered from an agricultural field at Chandkhuri village on January 5 and the body was identified to be that of Chandrakar's," Meena said, adding that a case of murder was registered at Pulgaon police station and a probe was launched.
Later, Ashok was detained based on suspicion. During his interrogation, he confessed that he had murdered Chandrakar along with Vickky and Basant, the SSP said.
With PTI inputs.
