Body in abandoned car: Driver murdered man for molesting wife

GREATER NOIDA: A man whose decomposed body was found in the back seat of a WagonR left abandoned outside Lotus Panache housing society 10 days ago was murdered by his driver who wanted to avenge a molestation attempt on his wife, police have learnt.
The driver, Ajay Sharma, was arrested from near the ATS roundabout around 11.15pm on Sunday. He admitted to have killed his employer Lokendra Singh by hitting him on the head repeatedly with a wrench on April 17 because he had allegedly groped his wife a couple of days earlier.

Ajay said he had persuaded Lokendra to have one too many to drink and attacked him with the wrench near Crown Plaza Hotel in Surajur. Careful enough to escape being caught in the hotel’s CCTV, Ajay drove the WagonR to a place near the Lotus Panache society and dumped the car there.

The WagonR, which Lokendra had bought in 2016, was registered on the platform of a taxi aggegrator and used to be driven by Ajay. The driver said he killed Lokendra because he had come to his home two days earlier looking for the car keys and molested his wife while he was asleep in another room.

“Lokendra worked as a guard in a private company from 7am-3pm every day. I would hand over the car keys to him every evening because he would drive it himself at times. On the evening of April 15, Lokendra came home looking for the keys. He was drunk. I was asleep and my wife went to hand over the keys. It was then that he tried to molest her,” Ajay said.

He said his wife had asked him the next day not to work for Lokendra any longer. “She did not tell me anything about the molestation attempt initially. The next morning, she asked me to leave the job. I asked her what had happened but she wouldn’t tell me anything. It was only when I slapped her that she told me what had transpired,” Ajay said.

The driver met Lokendra around 9.30pm on April 17 and both had a few drinks together, as they would do often. “I got him drunk and hit him on the head with a wrench inside the cab near Crown Plaza Hotel.”

Amit Srivastava, circle officer of Greater Noida I, said Ajay then drove the WagonR till Sector 108 and left the car with Lokendra’s body inside near Lotus Panache society. The car lay there abandoned till April 20, when a few road sweepers attracted by stench emanating from the vehicle informed police.

Police said Ajay’s wife worked as a gardener in the same company where Lokendra was a guard. Police are probing if there was a love affair involved in the case.

Lokendra’s family had last seen him on the morning of April 17. Originally from Bharatpur in Rajasthan, he lived in a rented accommodation in Surajpur with his wife, two sons and a daughter. A case under IPC sections 302 (murder) and 201 (disappearance of evidence) has been registered against Sharma.