Lured on pretext of b’day, kept sedated

Kanpur: Police said that during the interrogation, Gyanendra, the master-mind of Sanjeet kidnapping, revealed that he committed the crime to demand a Rs 30 lakh ransom from the murdered man’s parents as he and his four aides needed money to run a business.
According to the police, the accused lured the victim to a birthday party on June 22 evening and then took him to the rented house, sedated him for consecutive days and later when he tried to escape strangulated him on July 27 and then dumped the body in Pandu river and fled.
“The body was transported to Pandu river in a four-wheeler belonging to main accused Gyanendra,” said a police official.
According to the police, Kuldeep called up Sanjeet at 19:47 pm on June 22 and asked him to accompany him in Gyanendra’s car to celebrate latter’s birthday.
“Kuldeep along with Gyanendra, Ramji and Neelu Singh picked up Sanjeet from near Dhanwantari hospital in Naubasta. On the way, Kuldeep offered liquor to Sanjeet laced with sedatives. It was when he was knocked out of his senses, they took him to a rented accommodation at MIG in Barra - 6 area, where two other accused Simmi Singh and Preeti Sharma were already present. While Kuldeep used to attend his duty at a pathology, four others used to guard the victim shift-wise. They had involved a woman Preeti into crime to avoid suspicion of the landlord,” police said and added, “The accused had taken house on rent for a deposit of Rs 15,000 on June 15.”
A senior police official, meanwhile, said that the victim was injected with sedatives and kept hostage for about five days. “He was sedated whenever he regained consciousness during captivity,” he said and added that they were still questioning accused on why they placed the “ransom” call after the murder.