2 kill friend, try to pass it off as hit & run

NEW DELHI: A probe into what they thought was a case of accident on a road near Timarpur led cops instead to a murder. Two men had stabbed a friend on Tuesday night and left his body on the road to make it look like he was a victim of a car accident. The killing was apparently to avoid paying back the Rs 2.75 lakh that the men owed the victim.
Nitin Chhabra and Mannu Wadhwa, who had attended the same school as Pawan Batla, the man they killed, were traced to Hudson Lane in north Delhi and arrested on Wednesday. They confessed to their crime and were booked for murder and for trying to destroy evidence.

According to Nupur Prasad, DCP (North), some people noticed the prone Batla on the road and informed police. The 28-year-old was still breathing at the time the cops reached the spot, but died before he could be treated at Sushruta Trauma Centre. Doctors there, however, found stab wounds on Batla’s neck and shoulder. His face too was bludgeoned with a heavy implement. The killers apparently had also run him over with his own Honda City to make it look like an accident.

Even as the cops were trying to identify the victim, information reached them about a scorched Honda City abandoned on an empty stretch of Ring Road near Pitampura. The local cops, however, were able to retrieve the high security number plate. “Despite being burnt, the numbers on the embossed plate could be identified and led us to the registered address of the car owner,” said DCP Prasad.

After their arrest, Chhabra and Wadhwa told the cops that they had taken some jeans from Batla and sold them at a local market in north-east Delhi against which they had earned Rs 2.75 lakh. But when Batla demanded that they give him the money that was rightfully his, the duo demurred.

On Tuesday evening, Batla called the two men, both in their late 20s, to settle the financial dispute and accordingly left his shop in Kingsway Camp to meet them. He had no idea that Chhabra and Wadhwa had planned a horrific end for him. They first stabbed him before dragging him out of the car and hitting him with a rod. They then drove the Honda City across his collapsed body. Later, they took the car to Pitampura and set it afire.

Batla’s father, Ashwini, told police that his son had married last year and was assisting him in the family business. Other relatives claimed that Batla had asked Chhabra to pay back the due in instalments at a small interest. The grieving family said all three men had studied in the same school in Model Town and often met socially. Police said that Chhabra was a budding photographer, having completed a course in photography from a government institute.