An RTI activist thought to have been burnt to death in his car at Greater Noida in June and arrested by the Noida Police from Bangalore on Wednesday was presented before the media here on Thursday. The accused, Chandra Mohan Sharma, has been booked for faking his death and killing a mentally unstable man, whose body was found in the vehicle on May 1.
The accused was apprehended by a team of the Noida Police from Karnataka’s Kolar district, where he was working in a two-wheeler manufacturing unit of Honda in Narasapur.
His car had been found at Greater Noida’s Eldeco crossing on June 1 with a charred body inside it. His family had alleged that he was murdered because he was looking for land records of a disputed temple in Kasna village through RTI queries.
But, during his interrogation, the police found that a young woman who went missing from Kasna in June had something to do with Chandra Mohan’s plot. The two were apparently having an affair. On a complaint of the woman’s family, the police registered a case of kidnapping on June 7.
On August 12 and 13, her family got phone calls saying that the woman was at Tirupati Balaji and that they should take her home. When the police traced the phone numbers used, they found that the calls were made from public telephones in Bangalore.
Noida Police teams dispatched to Bangalore found through eye-witness and CCTV evidence that a man wearing a Honda uniform made the calls. Further investigation led the police to Honda’s factory in Narasapur, which is about 50 km from Bangalore.
There they found Chandra Mohan working under the name of Nitin Sharma, a resident of Hisar in Haryana. Chandra Mohan was working for Honda in Greater Noida at the time of his disappearance and had the requisite experience. After apprehending him at the factory at the end of his shift, the police recovered the woman from Kolar.
Chandra Mohan had forged his marksheets and shaved his hair, but the police found tattoos of his name, his wife Savita and his child Bunty on his arm.
Gautam Budh Nagar Senior Superintendent of Police Dr. Preetinder Singh said sustained interrogation of Chandra Mohan will continue, but as per his initial statements, his wife’s brother was also involved in the plot. Videsh, the brother-in-law, thought that his sister will get a job and a life insurance payout if he helped Chandra Mohan with the plot.
“His brother-in-law helped him bring the mentally unstable man from Ansal Plaza in Delhi to Greater Noida, where they strangled him with a belt before putting him in the car and setting it on fire,” explained Dr. Singh.
After escaping to Bangalore the first time, Chandra Mohan came back to Delhi on June 7 to take the young woman with him. While his plan seemed to work out, he could not make ends meet with his new job.
The police are now looking to identify the body found in Chandra Mohan’s car with DNA samples that have been preserved. They are also on the look-out for Videsh.
