Dairy employee held for murder of boss, colleague in Ludhiana

LUDHIANA: City police solved the double murder of a dairy owner and his worker with the arrest of the accused within 48 hours of the crime. A police team arrested the accused from Haridwar in Uttarakhand and recovered the murder weapon from his possession.
The arrested accused, Girdhari Lal, was a worker in the same dairy. He killed dairy owner Jyot Ram, 64 and worker Bhagwant Singh, 65, in the dairy of Bulara village early on February 26.
Ludhiana police commissioner Mandeep Singh Sidhu said police teams tracked down Girdahari Lal, who had fled with all his belongings after slitting the victims' throats. "The challenge in this case was that the accused had no family here. Moreover, he did not carry a mobile phone.
Different teams were formed under the supervision of joint CP rural Ravcharan Singh Brar, ADCP-II Suhail Qasim Mir and ACP South Vaibhbav Sehgal. Police teams used CCTV footage from the dairy and other cameras along the route to track Girdahari Lal's movements. They apprehended him in Haridwar, where he was sitting at a ghat," he said.
The police commissioner added that the accused committed the crime after a monetary dispute with the employer. Girdhari Lal quit the job a few months ago but rejoined two months back. He had been asking Jyot Ram to clear Rs 50,000 dues but Jyot Ram had been maintaining that he owed him nothing.
On being asked why he killed Bhagwant, ADCP Mir said, "The dairy owner used to sleep in a room while Bhagwant used to sleep in the varandah. Bhagwant woke up on hearing Jyot Ram's screams when Girdhari killed him.
Therefore, Girdhari killed him too by slitting his throat. Then he dragged his body inside a room where fodder was kept and escaped. The accused used a sharp-edged weapon used in dairy work at the dairy which has been recovered."
ADCP Mir also said that the accused was earlier booked in 1996 and 2014 for drug peddling when 46kg opium and 35kg opium was recovered from his possession. He has completed his sentence in these cases.