5 booked for using cobra to kill 30-yr-old Uttarakhand businessman: Cops
The 30-year-old man was found dead inside his car, with the ignition on, parked at the side of the road near Teenpani area.
The police in Uttarakhand’s Haldwani booked five people for allegedly using a cobra to kill a 30-year-old businessman and then trying to pass off the murder as an accident, officers familiar with the matter said on Tuesday.
According to the officers, the police have arrested a snake charmer, Ramesh Nath, from Uttar Pradesh, while the other four accused – the woman the victim was in a relationship with, Mahi alias Dolly Arya, her friend Deep Kandpal and her two house helps – are absconding.
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The 30-year-old man was found dead inside his car, with the ignition on, parked at the side of the road near Teenpani area, senior superintendent of police (SSP) Nainital Pankaj Bhatt said.
“On July 15, trader Ankit Chauhan was found dead in his car... the police took his body into custody and sent it for postmortem examination, which suggested that he died due to snake venom,” the SSP added.
Chauhan’s call details were scanned, and cops found that he was in touch with a woman named Mahi, police said. “We tracked the call records of the woman from where we found the contact of a UP-based snake charmer Ramesh Nath. His number was put on surveillance, and he was arrested from UP on Monday... during interrogation he revealed that the woman, her friend Deep Kanpal and her two helps hatched the conspiracy of kill Chauhan, by unleashing a cobra on him,” the senior officer said.
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“Initially, the police thought that the death was an accident maybe due to excess of carbon monoxide in the closed vehicle. But after the postmortem report, the police changed the course of investigation... We found that the incident took place on July 14, when Chauhan visited Mahi’s home. The four other accused were present at the scene... they probably made him drink alcohol or some other substance which made him unconscious and then unleashed the cobra on him,” the SSP said.
Chauhan’s sister Isha also filed a complaint with the police naming Mahi and Deep Kanpal as the suspects, police said.
Based on the complaint, a first information report was registered against the five accused under section 302 (murder) of the Indian Penal Code at Haldwani police station.
“The snake charmer told police that Chauhan used to abuse the woman in an inebriated condition which is why she took the extreme step,” police said.
“The four accused will be arrested, we are tracking their mobile phones to trace their locations, but their phones are switched off,” police added.
