Businessman, two aides held for Sitapur triple murder

LUCKNOW: With the help of his five accomplices, a local businessman had hatched the conspiracy to murder a 35-year-old beauty parlour owner and her two minor daughters in Sitapur, nearly 90 kilometres from Lucknow.

The two sisters’ bodies were found at different places in a subcanal of Sharada canal in Sitapur on Sunday while their mother’s body was found in a separate place on Tuesday.

The businessman, Naveen Kumar Gupta and his two accomplices, Dilip Sharma and Zuber, were arrested on Wednesday while three others, Rahul Lodh, Mukesh Lodh and Pankaj Kumar are still at large and raids are going on for their arrest.

Superintendent of police (SP), Sitapur, Anand Kulkarni said Gupta revealed during interrogation that he planned the crime after feeling betrayed by the woman with whom he earlier had intimate relations.

He said Gupta got the woman and her two daughters, aged between 9 and 10 years, strangled after taking them along to Sharma’s mobile shop on the pretext of purchasing mobile accessories.

As the woman and her daughters were familiar with Gupta, they readily accompanied him.

The SP said Gupta had not planned to murder the two minor girls but his accomplices mounted pressure on him that their crime would be exposed if they were left alive.

He said Gupta then strangled them to death at the same place. One of the co-accused, Mukesh Lodh even raped the elder sister before murdering her , he added.