Agra: A 25-year-old youth was kidnapped by his friends for a ransom of Rs. 2 crores on 21st June. He was later murdered the same night and then cremated at Balkeshwar Ghat, when he was released as a COVID patient.
Sachin Chauhan was the only son of cold storage owner Suresh Chauhan, his family members lodged a missing complaint but he could not be traced.
On Sunday night, the Special Task Force received a tip-off, following which they detained five people, including Sachin’s close friend Harsh Chauhan, the son of his father’s business partner. They confessed to the murder which led to the arrest of 32-year-old Sachin Aswani, 35-year-old Happy Khanna, 30-year-old Manoj Bansal, 25-year-old Rinku and 24-year-old Harsh Chauhan.
According to the police, Sachin and Harsh often went to a sports club in Aswani in Agra’s Dayalbagh area.
Sachin became friends with Ashwani and started borrowing money from her. When the amount borrowed reached Rs 40 lakh, Ashwini asked Sachin to return the money, but he was not ready to return it.
Ashwini and Harsh then plan to kidnap Sachin and demand a ransom of Rs 2 crore from his father.
On June 21, Aswani invited Sachin to attend a liquor party in Khaspur village. The accused had allegedly killed her by slitting her throat.
SSP Muniraj ji said, “To mislead the police, the accused bought PPE kit from a medical shop in Kamla Nagar and covered himself with a fake name and cremated his body in Balkeshwar. The next day Ashwani’s cousin Happy Khanna and his friend Rinku collected her ashes and immersed them in the Yamuna.”
STF Inspector Uday Pratap Singh said that the accused made the mistake of giving the contact number of one of their relatives at the ghat. After the cremation, Happy’s friend Manoj Bansal took Sachin’s mobile phone to Kanpur to mislead the police. Police said that Manoj was to pay a ransom of Rs 2 crore but he could not muster the courage to do so.
“When he got a call from Sachin’s mother, she told him that Sachin was sleeping and they were in Noida,” police said.
Police said the family got suspicious and lodged a missing complaint on June 22.
(With information from IANS)
.