Domestic help strangles elderly houseowner, held

The victim had disallowed overnight stay for accused’s friends

November 29, 2018 01:42 am | Updated 01:42 am IST - NEW DELHI

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.

0 / 0
Sign in to unlock member-only benefits!
  • Access 10 free stories every month
  • Save stories to read later
  • Access to comment on every story
  • Sign-up/manage your newsletter subscriptions with a single click
  • Get notified by email for early access to discounts & offers on our products
Sign in

Comments

Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.

We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.