Driver held in event coordinator’s murder

MUMBAI: Police claimed on Monday to have solved Andheri-based event coordinator Satish Gupta’s murder barely a week after the crime with the arrest of his former driver, Shyamsunder Dukhanti Yadav, 23, from a village near Panvel.

Senior inspector Ajendrasingh Sadansingh Thakur of the DN Nagar police station said, “The medical condition of the deceased, who was HIV positive, had initially thrown us offtrack as the murder appeared to have been committed on the morning of January 14. The accused had made a phone call to Gupta’s Delhi office on January 13 and informed an employee that he had killed his boss.”

The suspect, who was employed as a driver by Gupta until six months ago, was at Gupta’s residence on January 13 when he was allegedly consumed by greed. When Gupta asked Yadav to massage him with oil, the latter boiled a pot of oil and allegedly poured it on the drunk man.

“Then, Yadav hit Gupta with a chair, killing him, and left with five cell phones, five gold rings, a bracelet, a gold chain, and his Accent Viva car,” Thakur said.

Police found that one of Gupta’s phones had been used on the night of January 13 to call up the police control room in Mumbai as well as a number in Ghazipur in North India. “We were able to establish that the person in Ghazipur had Gupta’s number on his call list as well as another number, which was also on Gupta’s call records,” Thakur said. Police tracked down the second number to Panvel and reached a man named Abhimanyu Yadav, who, in turn, led them to Yadav alias Pinto at Pandher village.

a_renni@dnaindia.net