St. Stephen’s murder: case transferred to crime branch

After eight months, the Delhi Police have transferred investigation in the murder case of St. Stephen’s doctor Shashwat Pande to the Crime Branch, the police said on Monday.

A police officer, who was part of the investigation, said that during the course of the probe, several friends and relatives of the accused, Suyash Gupta, received Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) calls on their mobile phones that were originating from Nepal.

The police suspect that he might be hiding in Nepal but admitted that there are no significant clues that he might be living there.

However, the Delhi High Court was hearing the petition moved by the parents of Mr. Gupta, seeking his whereabouts.

“We were monitoring Mr. Gupta’s friends in Lucknow and Varanasi with whom he was in touch on regular basis but after the murder he stopped contacting everyone. We had sent teams to Himachal Pradesh but he was not found. It is suspected that he might have gone to Nepal via Gorakhpur,” a police officer said.

Facebook posts

After allegedly killing Dr. Pande, Dr. Gupta had posted on Facebook that it had been nice staying in India.

His car was found abandoned at Anand Vihar bus terminal.

“It is confirmed that he has not travelled by any flight in the country as we had already alerted all concerned authorities to stop him from flying out of the country,” added the police officer.

On August 2017, Dr. Gupta had allegedly stabbed Dr. Pande to death inside the radiology department of the hospital.

Reward increased

The police have hiked the reward amount for any information on Dr. Gupta, from ₹50,000 to ₹1 lakh.