NEW DELHI: What began as a 39-year-old’s routine club-hopping night ended in a scene of visceral horror — a crime scene with a half-naked body, a face covered with debris and a chest with injuries that indicated a desperate struggle before death. The police tracked the alleged killer of the man from the high-energy bars of Paharganj to a digital “test transaction” of a single rupee. The trail led the investigators to a 17-year-old, who after the murder wanted more and stole the man’s credit card. While piecing together the leads, the police came across details of a sexual liaison gone wrong, after which rage and murder quickly followed.
Joint commissioner of police Madhur Verma said that on Jan 25, the 39-year-old left his north Delhi home on his motorcycle, and never returned. His bike was found near the RK Ashram metro station on Jan 27. The family’s fears crystallised into a missing person report at Paharganj railway station. The grisliness of it all emerged on Feb 2, when the man’s younger brother fou-nd out from his friends that his sibling used to rent a room to party. He followed the lead to the Railway Colony. When he turned up, the room was locked from inside.
On breaking the lock, the stench of a rotting body and pure horror greeted him. His brother’s partially decomposed, half-naked body was sprawled on the floor, his face obscured by debris and his chest bearing marks of struggle. There were blood-soaked garments and scattered articles in the room. Joint commissioner Verma formed a team, led by DCP Sumit Kumar Jha, to crack the case. The forensic team noted the fatal injuries on the man’s neck and chest. But the killer had vanished, leaving the trail cold. There were no immediate suspects. The breakthrough came not from the streets, but from the digital ether. Investigators tracking the man’s financial footprint noticed a peculiar “test transaction” of a single rupee via UPI. Following the crumbs, the team traced the beneficiary account to a 17-year-old in Ghaziabad. Simultaneously, CCTV footage from the night of the disappearance showed the man boarding an auto-rickshaw with a young male. Using local intellige-nce and quick raids across Delhi and Uttar Pradesh, the joint teams closed in. In the early hours of Feb 3, the minor was apprehended near Mandir Marg in Delhi. His interrogation, police said, unravelled an account that had horror and cold-blooded opportunism in equal parts. The 17-year-old had been loitering outside a Paharganj bar on the night of Jan 25 when the man, who was out pub-hopping, allegedly approached him. According to the boy, he offered the teenager money and invited him to his secret room. There, the encounter allegedly turned dark. The boy said that they had a dispute as the man tried an “unnatural” act with him. In a flash of panic and rage, the teenager grabbed a gas cylinder nearby and struck the man, who was on top of him, on the forehead. He collapsed. But the boy was not done. With a jagged shard of glass, he went about attacking the man, inflicting injuries to his throat and chest. As the man lay motionless in a pool of his own blood, the teenager discar-ded his own stained cloth-es and donned a clean outfit belonging to the man. He also stole Rs 2,000, a credit card, and a mobile phone that he found on him. He then locked the door and slid the key inside to delay discovery. The teenager then fled to Ghaziabad. The following morning, he bought a smartphone for Rs 14,000 with the dead man’s money. He withdrew the cash using his card. This was enough digital footprint to set the police on the chase. DCP Jha told TOI that the police have found the boy’s “blood-stained clothes” and the articles he had used as “weapons”, as well as the “newly purchased phone.”
