Agra: A 25-year-old was kidnapped by his friends for a ransom of Rs. 2 crores on June 21st. He was later murdered the same night and then cremated at Balkeshwar Ghat after they passed him off as a Covid patient.
Sachin Chauhan was the only son of cold storage owner Suresh Chauhan, his family members had filed a missing person complaint but he could not be traced.
On Sunday night, the Special Task Force received a tip-off after which they detained five people, including Sachin's close friend Harsh Chauhan, who is the son of his father's business partner. They confessed to the murder which led to the arrest of Sachin Aswani, 32, Happy Khanna, 35, Manoj Bansal, 30, Rinku, 25, and Harsh Chauhan, 24.
According to police, Sachin and Harsh used to frequently visit a sports club owned by Aswani in Agra's Dayalbagh area.
Sachin became friends with Aswani and began to borrow money from him. When the borrowed amount reached Rs 40 lakh, Aswani asked Sachin to return the money, but he was not willing to pay it back.
Aswani and Harsh then made a plan to kidnap Sachin and demand a ransom of Rs 2 crore from his father.
On June 21, Aswani called Sachin to join them for a booze party at Khaspur village. He was allegedly smothered to death by the accused.
SSP Muniraj G. said, "In a bid to mislead the police, the accused bought PPE kits from a medical shop in Kamla Nagar and after covering themselves, they cremated his body at Balkeshwar under a fake name. The next day, Aswani's cousin Happy Khanna and his friend Rinku collected his ashes and immersed them in the Yamuna."
STF inspector Uday Pratap Singh said that the accused made the mistake of giving one of their relative's contact numbers at the ghat. After cremation, Happy's friend Manoj Bansal took Sachin's mobile phone to Kanpur to mislead the police. Police said that Manoj was to make the ransom call for Rs 2 crore but he could not gather the courage to do so.
"When he got a call from Sachin's mother on his number, he told her that Sachin was sleeping and they were in Noida," said the police.
The family got suspicious and filed a missing complaint on June 22, police said.
(With information from IANS)