A 92-year-old man was strangled to death on Wednesday, two days after he allegedly did not allow his house help’s two friends to stay overnight in his house in south-east Delhi’s Badarpur, the police said.
Acting swiftly in the case, the police apprehended three juveniles from Ballabhgarh railway station within six hours of the incident.
No verification
“The house help had been hired a month ago after he was referred by a relative who stay in Ujjain. However, his background had not been verified. They had just taken his Aadhaar Card when he joined work,” said a police officer.
DCP (South-East) Chinmoy Biswal said, “On Monday, the house help had brought two of his friends stating that they are his friends from his home town in Madhya Pradesh’s Ujjain. He asked the house owner to allow his friends to stay in the house for couple of days, however, the house owner refused. The domestic help dropped his friends somewhere else and came back.
A police team will be sent to Ujjain to verify the ages of the apprehended juveniles and to find out if they were involved in any other criminal cases, said Mr. Biswal.
The victim, Chandrabhan, lived on the ground floor of his two-storey residence in Badarpur. His son Surendra Kumar, (58) stays with his wife Saroj (56), their son Kapil Garg (36), his wife Preeti (34) and their two sons Arnab (7) and another who is just 28-day-old, on the first floor. The family had hired the help to take care of Chandrabhan as he was bedridden.
On Wednesday morning, Ms. Saroj Kumar went to drop her grandson to the bus stop. On her return, she found the main door was locked from inside. The house help opened the door after she repeatedly knocked.
On being questioned, the help told her that Babaji [Chandrabhan] is lying unconscious. As she entered the room, she saw two more men. Babaji was lying on the bed. She raised an alarm to call other family members but she was gagged by one of them and they tried to strangulate her with an iron wire leaving her critically injured. Fearing of being caught by other members, the trio fled.
The police have recovered a CCTV footage in which the trio are seen running out of the house. The family made a PCR call and a police team reached the residence. The house was not ransacked.