Skeleton in the flowerbed: Man murdered nephew for getting close to his girlfriend

NEW DELHI: “I last saw him going to a party with a friend and don’t know where he went after that,” Bijay Kumar Maharana would tell his sister whenever she asked him about her missing son, Jai Prakash Maharana. She had come to Delhi after her son was reported missing in February 2016. Little did the mother know that she was metres away from her son’s body, which had been secreted under a flowerbed on the balcony after he was killed by her duplicitous brother.




Three months after TOI reported the discovery of skeletal remains from the balcony of a flat in south-west Delhi’s Dabri, police finally arrested Bijay Kumar last Saturday for the murder of his nephew. Bijay, a BCA graduate, had cleverly deflected suspicion by himself filing a missing person complaint at the Dabri police station on February 12, 2016, saying that his nephew, who shared the flat with him, was missing since February 7.

Jai Prakash’s mother stayed in the same flat for 15 days, virtually at arm’s distance from her missing son. The young man had moved in with his uncle in 2015 after completing his studies in Hyderabad. He was employed with a private firm in Gurgaon. Jai Prakash’s skeletal remains were found on October 8 last year when the owner of the rented flat carried out some renovation work. The workers removed the soil from the flowerbed on the balcony only to uncover the skeleton. The remnants of a blue jacket were also found and later determined to belong to Jai Prakash. DNA tests proved the skeleton were the remains of the missing youth.

DCP Rajender Singh Sagar said on Thursday that a team led by inspector Raj Kumar had nabbed Bijay from Hyderabad after trailing him for three months. Investigating officers said that Bijay had changed his appearance and was currently working with a tech firm in Hyderabad as its HR manager. For two years, he had cut off all contacts with his family, the cops said.

The investigating teams began looking for Bijay soon after the discovery of the skeleton, but he had vacated the flat by then. Police found that the family in Odisha had no clue to his whereabouts either. He had switched off his mobile phones, left his Delhi job, and stopped operating his bank accounts after withdrawing all the money in them.

The cops contacted the Noida firm that had employed Bijay, and acting on its inputs went to Ambala, Sonipat and Panipat, all in Haryana. The teams also scanned social media and managed to contact the man’s former girlfriend, who confirmed that she had known Jai Prakash as well.

Gathering new details, the investigators reached Visakhapatnam and met a close friend, who told them that he had met Bijay two months earlier in Hyderabad. The teams followed the lead and in December, managed to trace him there. He was nabbed on Sunday.

During interrogation, Bijay told the cops that he had planned the murder because his nephew had begun to annoy him by becoming too close to his girlfriend. He confessed that whenever his girlfriend from his college days visited, he could see Prakash being very friendly towards her.

He said he also discovered that his nephew was sharing text messages and phone calls with the girl, but would not show him the messages they exchanged. His state of mind at such a time wasn’t helped by the fact that he had recently lost a big amount in betting and was under stress.

On the night of February 7, he smashed Jai Prakash’s head with a ceiling fan motor and hid his body under a mound of earth on which he planted flowers. Two months later, he moved to Nangloi, where he stayed for a year before disappearing from Delhi.

The cops said that before his arrest, Kumar had gone for auditions at film studios in Hyderabad to try and kick-start his acting career.