Bastar Journalist Mukesh Chandrakar Was Murdered By Cousins: SIT Report
Journalist Mukesh Chandrakar was murdered by his cousins due to his exposé on corruption in a road construction project, according to SIT report.
The Special Investigation Team (SIT) investigating the murder of Mukesh Chandrakar on Thursday said the journalist was killed by his cousins as they were angered by his reportage on road construction contract, which alleged corruption charges in the project. As per the officials, some of journalist's cousins were involved it the corruption.
Mukesh had exposed alleged corruption in a Rs 120-crore road construction project from Gangalur to Hiroli in the Bastar region. It is believed that the motive behind Mukesh's murder was due to this report which he aired on December 25. The project was being oveerseen by contractor Suresh Chandrakar.
Accorging to his report, the project's initial tender was worth Rs 50 crore. However, it got escalated to Rs 120 crore without any changes to the scope of work.
As per the SIT report, Mukesh's call record details have revealed that his last two calls were from another cousin Ritesh Chandrakar. Ritesh is Suresh's brother. As per the officials, the CCTV footage showed that Ritesh was seen on January 2 at Kondagaon toll plaza and later at Raipur airport, boarding a flight to Delhi, as reported by NDTV.
However, to further investigate the matter, police then took Dinesh Chandrakar into the custody. Dinesh is another cousin of Mukesh, and brother of Suresh and Ritesh. After hours of interrogation, Dinesh confessed that Ritesh and Mahendra Ramteke, one of their supervisors, murdered Mukesh using an iron rod and hid his body in the tank.
Earlier, Mukesh Chandrakar's body was found in a septic tank in a shed owned by a contractor in Bastar division of Chhattisgarh. He was last seen leaving his home in Bijapur's Pujari Para on New Year's Day. His brother, Yukesh, filed a missing complaint next day, when Mukesh did not return. Police later found the body of Mukesh in Chhatan Para Basti.
The post-mortem report of Mukesh revealed that he was attacked with a hard object and suffered severe head injuries to his head, chest, back and stomach.
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