Debt ridden jeweller held for murdering goldsmith

Four days after a 27-year-old goldsmith, Nitesh Soni, was found murdered and lying in a pool of blood in his workshop on Saturday evening, the Dindoshi police arrested his relative, Hemant Soni (28) for the crime. The arrest was made on Tuesday from Rajasthan, where Hemant was hiding at his native place.

"Hemant while giving his confession told that he wanted to expand his business had taken a loan of Rs 15 lakhs. Also, he started spending money at dance bars so he was running poor on financial and professional grounds. Hemant had suspected that Nitesh had complained of his affair with a dance bar girl to his wife, due to which she abandoned him three months ago to stay with her parents. On the professional front also, Nitesh was doing better than Hemant, which added fuel to the fire and Hemant decided to eliminate Nitesh," said a senior police officer.

Last week on Saturday night, Hemant went at Nitesh's house and after sitting for over four hours with him alone, he stabbed Nitesh with a sharp object near his eye which caused excessive blood loss eventually leading to death. After killing Nitesh, Hemant took the Digital Video Recorder (DVR) of the CCTV cameras installed at the premises and then fled the workshop with Rs 5.50 lakh in cash and gold ornaments worth Rs 10 lakh, said police. He has been booked under for murder (section 302), causing disappearance of evidence (section 201) and robbery (section 397) under the IPC.