Tattoo artist murder case: Co-accused shows ‘proof’, says wasn’t present at spot

LUCKNOW: Sanket Agnihotri, one of the two persons accused in the tattoo artist murder case, on Monday broke his silence and shared ‘evidence’ to claim that he was not present on the spot at the time of the incident.
On March 27, tattoo artist Gurpreet Singh alias Guppi (30) had drowned in Indira canal in Chinhat. The police had then said that Singh had gone to the place along with two friends — Amrita and Sanket Agnihotri — for a picnic where he had drowned. Later, on the complaint of Gurpreet’s family, a case of murder was lodged against his two friends. However, on Friday the police recovered the mobile location of Sanket to be elsewhere. Sanket (30) has been reluctant to talk to media since then. However, after much persuasion, he spoke to TOI on Monday.

An MBA from a city-based private institute, Sanket shared booking details of the radio taxi, call records and transaction details of the debit card on that day to prove that he was not on the spot. He said that he has also given the ‘evidence’ to the police. “I was with my mother the entire afternoon on that day. She returned home after buying a pair of slippers and I went to a mall on Kanpur Road to purchase shoes via Metro,” he said.“Around 5.16pm, Amrita called me and told me that Guppi had drowned in Indira Canal. She also asked me to text phone numbers of his friends. I rushed to the spot in a radio taxi and reached there at 6.05pm,” he said.

“Amrita was not there while locals had surrounded the area. I inquired about Amrita but nobody could tell. Then I dialled UP 100 to inform about the incident. In the meantime, I saw some divers from whom I enquired about Guppi, but they too were clueless. The policemen present there took me to Chinhat police station where I saw Amrita sitting with her head on the table,” Sanket recalled. “The police questioned me about the incident and did not allow me to talk to Amrita. We both were made to sit in separate rooms. I got to know that I and Amrita have been booked on the charges of murder next morning,” he added.

SHO Chinhat Sachin Singh said that police were awaiting FSL report of Gurpreet’s postmortem.