Monday, 04 SEPTEMBER 2023 | PNS | DEHRADUN
The police arrested a man from Bareilly on charges of killing the woman who was found stuffed in a sack in Haridwar’s Landhaura town on Thursday. The victim was a beggar in the Har Ki Paidi area who reportedly owed about Rs 7,000 to the accused but refused to pay him back which prompted the latter to kill her, said Haridwar’s senior superintendent of police Ajai Singh. He said that no police complaint was filed on behalf of the victim so the police took cognisance themselves and registered a complaint. He said that the police got information during the investigation that Dhara Singh, a resident of Bareilly, was living on rent at the house in Landhaura along with his wife for about five months. He was a vegetable and fruit vendor. An elderly woman aged about 55 to 60 years was staying with them for the past few days, as per locals. The SSP said that four teams were formed to investigate the case. The first team gathered inputs from locals and CCTV cameras installed in the area. The second team was conducting an intensive checking campaign in border areas and was analysing footage of CCTV cameras. The third team was searching for the accused’s relatives and his permanent address and the fourth team was Investigating on Muzaffarnagar and Meerut routes and toll plazas, added Singh. He said that the police were finally able to arrest Dhara Singh from Bareilly within 48 hours of registering the murder case. According to the accused, he had given the victim a cart on rent that she used for begging on a deal of daily payment of Rs 80. The woman had not paid him for long and owed him about Rs 7,000. The SSP said that as per the accused, he made a plan to recover his money and called the woman in Landhaura telling that he would help her to get one of the electric rickshaws meant for disabled people. According to him, they both had an argument over pending dues on August 28 when he hit her on the head with a brick and choked her to death with a cloth, as per SSP. He said that when the accused did not find any way to dispose of the body, he decided to take it out of the house by pretending to shift from the house. When called a tempo to shift his house objects on August 30, the driver refused to put the sack with the victim’s body on to the vehicle. When people started gathering around him, he left the sack and escaped, said Singh.
