100 cops probe case, no breakthrough yet
NEWDELHI: Twelve people, including family members, employees and domestic helps, were questioned on Sunday as police tried to find clues to crack the sensational murders of five people in east Delhi’s Shahdara.
The bodies of 82-year-old Urmila Jindal, her three daughters and a security guard were recovered from the sprawling ‘Jindal Oil Mills’ haveli on Saturday.
Twenty-five teams comprising around 100 personnel from Shahdara district have been formed to probe and crack the case, police said.
Senior police officers who are supervising the investigation said they had questioned more than 30 people since the murders came to light around 7am on Saturday. However, they are yet to make a breakthrough or find a motive behind the killings. The police have also not been able to recover the weapon(s) used to stab the four women and the security guard.
Police have already ruled out robbery as a motive despite the women’s room being ransacked. They said the killers had deliberately ransacked the scene to mislead the police.
The nephews and relatives of the dead women, however, have also been denying property dis- pute as a possible motive.
Investigators told Hindustan Times that the killers murdered Rakesh near the main entry gate. Thereafter, they dragged his body for 15 metres towards the parking area and hid it behind some two-wheelers parked there. While Urmila’s body was found near the bedroom door, two of her daughters were found dead in a pool of blood inside the bedroom. The other daughter was stabbed and murdered in the drawing room, close to the main door of the flat.
Nupur Prasad, deputy commissioner of police (Shahdara), said each of the 25 teams has been given different tasks. The tasks include preparing a list of suspects and tracing people who had access to the haveli, their questioning, scanning of CCTV cameras installed nearby, probing the role of local criminals, collecting call details records and dump data of mobile phones active around the crime scene.
“We have yet not ruled out property dispute as a motive in the case. The autopsy reports of the victims confirmed they were not drugged or smothered before stabbing. The actual cause of deaths was stabbing and excessive bleeding,” she said.
Investigators said they are verifying the claims of relatives that nobody heard anything, even as killers made a friendly entry into and murdered five people.