Quite disappointing
Day after ‘kidnapping’, 17-year-old’s body found in Kanpur; tuition teacher, her partner arrested
The body of a 17-year-old boy, the son of a prominent businessman, was found on Tuesday at the house of his former tuition teacher’s partner in Kanpur, police said. Three people, including the teacher, were arrested.
The teacher, 25-year-old Rachita Vats, used to give private tuition to the victim between 2019 and 2021, police said. Rachita’s partner Prabhat Shukla (26) and his friend Shiv Gupta (23) were the other two arrested.
Police said Prabhat allegedly killed the victim on suspicion that he was having an affair with Rachita. After killing the victim, Prabhat wrote a ransom letter seeking Rs 30 lakh from the victim’s family to make his disappearance seem like a kidnapping, police said. A religious slogan was also written on the letter, which police said was meant to mislead investigators.
According to police, when the victim was leaving a coaching centre on his scooter on Monday evening, Prabhat stopped him and asked for a lift home. When they reached Prabhat’s home, he asked the victim to come in, police said.
CCTV footage showed the victim, wearing a helmet, following a man into a room.
“In the footage, we saw the victim entering a room along with a man at around 4.30 pm (on Monday)… Around 35 minutes later, the same man was seen coming out of the room. Since then, no one was seen entering the room,” said Joint Commissioner of Police, Kanpur, Anand Prakash Tiwari.
Police later identified the man who entered the room with the victim as Prabhat.
“Police raided the room (on Tuesday) and found the body of the victim lying on the floor. It is confirmed that after 5.15 pm (on Monday), no person entered the room where the body was found,” Tiwari said.
Police suspect the victim was strangled. The body has been sent for postmortem and the report is awaited.
By 7.30 pm on Monday, the victim’s family called him as he did not return from his coaching classes. Finding his phone switched off, the family also called his friends and coaching class teachers to find out his whereabouts, but without any success. In the meantime, Prabhat’s friend Shiv Gupta allegedly delivered the ransom letter to the victim’s house, police said.
Upon finding the letter, the family informed the police.
Ankita Verma, the SHO of Raipurwa police station, said the ransom letter was sent to make it appear that the victim was kidnapped for ransom.
An uncle of the victim said Rachita used to visit their house even after she stopped giving tuition classes to the 17-year-old. “She was like a family member. I still don’t know what the motive behind the murder is. We suspect it could be money…We never even dreamt that Rachita could be involved,” he said.
Manish Sahu – 2023-10-31 13:57