Body of missing student found buried 6ft under landlord's room

Ghaziabad: The decomposed body of a 30-year-old law student missing for the past one week was found buried 6ft under the concrete floor of one of the rooms his landlord had built recently in Sahibabad.

The landlord, who is accused of murdering the student, is absconding along with his family. The deceased has been identified as Pankaj Singh, a fourth-year LLB student with a private college in Ghaziabad.

He was staying as a tenant in the house for the past one month.

sApart from studies, Pankaj ran a cybercafe in the area and gave tuitions to more than 15 schoolchildren, including four of the landlord, Munna Yadav.

Pankaj’s family is from Ballia and he had been living in Ghaziabad for the past four years. His father Narender Singh said he always suspected Munna of murdering his son, and it was only after he insisted that the cops agreed to dig the cemented floor. They dug 3ft on Saturday and found nothing. On Monday, they resumed digging and found the body 6ft under.

“On October 9, I tried calling my son but his phone was not reachable. When we failed to trace him till evening the next day, I lodged a missing person’s complaint at Sahibabad police station,” Narender said.

According to him, Pankaj and Munna had a heated exchange on October 8 and Pankaj had told him that the landlord wanted him to sell the cybercafé. “My son refused to sell the café to him. I suspect he was murdered for that,” he said.

The father accused police of delaying the probe, though the family had handed the cops CCTV clips showing Pankaj near the Sahibabad house. Narender said he had lodged a complaint on October 10, while the FIR was registered two days later.

After repeated requests, police started digging the floor of the three rooms that Munna had built recently in the basement of his three-storey house. What aroused Narender’s and the cops’ suspicion is that a portion of the floor in one of the rooms seemed different.

When the body was fished out, Pankaj had marks on his neck. He was wearing a T-shirt and blue jeans. The autopsy report is awaited.

SP (city) Manish Kumar Mishra said personal enmity could be behind the murder. “The way the youth has been murdered and his body dumped indicates some personal reason. We got clues after we saw that a portion of the floor was different from the rest of the area. We started digging the floor and after hitting an iron rod, we saw mud coming out of it. We started digging more and recovered the body,” he added.

Pankaj’s family took the body to Ballia on Monday evening for performing the last rites.

An FIR has been lodged against the entire family of Munna Yadav under Section 302 (murder) of the IPC. Munna is unemployed and lived off the rents he received from Pankaj and other tenants. “On October 11, he was called to the police station, but he fled with his wife and four children. We are checking CCTV footage. He will be arrested soon,” Mishra said.