Live-in elderly couple killed over property dispute, five arrested

LUCKNOW : A live-in elderly couple was murdered by the deceased man’s three sons and two grandsons over dispute related to selling of property at his Madiaon residence here on Monday night, said police officials on Tuesday.

The officials said the victims were identified as Ram Dayal Gautam, 70 and his live-in partner Shanti Maurya, 60, residents of Semragadi locality in Madiaon.

They said Ram Dayal hails from Itaunja’s Arjunpur village on city’s outskirts. He, however, was living in a separate house along with Shanti after leaving his wife and other family members for past 10 years. He has five sons and two daughters.

Lucknow Commissioner of Police (CP) Dhruv Kant Thakur said the incident held at around 10 pm on Monday night but police was informed about the incident by Shanti’s son Sanjay Maurya at around 1am on intervening night of Monday/Tuesday. He said the police immediately swung into action and had arrested all five accused involved in the crime.

He said the accused confessed committing the crime during interrogation

The CP said they told the investigators that Ram Dayal has around two bighas (i.e nearly 54,450 square feet) of land in Arjunpur, Itaunja and out of which nearly 9,000 square feet land worth ₹60 lakh is on the main Lucknow-Sitapur highway. He said Ram Dayal’s sons wanted it to sell this highway land to one Sumit Trivedi of

Madiaon and had taken an advance from him. But Ram Dayal sold a portion of this land to somebody else in ₹15 lakh and even gave ₹4 lakh to Shanti’s son, he added.

He said Ram Dayal’s sons and grandsons had gone to his place in Madiaon to convince him not to sell the remaining land but there they had confrontation with him and Shanti. He said Shanti told them that she will not allow Ram Dayal to give this land to them following which the accused got furious and strangulated both of them with a shawl. He said the accused escaped from there and were hiding in their native village from where they were later arrested. He said the FIR under IPC section 302 for murder has been registered on the complaint of Shanti’s son and the accused had been sent to jail.