EX-J&K legislative council member found dead in friend’s west Delhi flat
Former member of Jammu and Kashmir legislative council and a senior National Conference leader from Jammu, 67-year-old Tarlochan Singh Wazir, was found dead in west Delhi’s Moti Nagar area on Thursday morning, police said.
Police officers said they got a call from the Jammu and Kashmir Police informing them to check on Wazir, who was staying in a flat in Moti Nagar. A police team reached the flat and found that the door of the house was locked from outside. The police got the door open and found Wazir’s decomposed body lying in the washroom.
The officers said Wazir’s body was identified with the help of a local acquaintance, and the Jammu and Kashmir police were informed about his death. They added that they found Wazir’s
phone at the crime scene.
Urvija Goel, deputy commissioner of police (west) said Wazir reached Delhi on September 1, and he was supposed to fly to Canada on September 3. His family members sought the help of the local police after they could not get in touch with him for several days. They also called up their relatives in Canada to ask about Wazir but even they did not know anything about his whereabouts.
Wazir’s relatives told Jammu and Kashmir police that he was going to stay in his friend, Harpreet Singh’s flat in west Delhi’s Moti Nagar before flying to Canada on September 3. The local police then got in touch with their counterparts in Delhi.
“The body was completely decomposed. Wazir was identified with the help of one of the acquaintances,” DCP Goel said, adding a case under sections 302 of IPC has been registered.
Investigating officers said when Wazir’s family got in touch with Harpreet, he told them that he was in 72-hour quarantine in Frankfurt. Local residents also told the Delhi Police that they have not seen Harpreet at his house for several days. The officers, however, did not immediately say if they were treating Harpreet as a suspect, or if they were going to contact him about the case.
The local residents told the police that since there was no stench from the body, and the house was locked from outside, they did not suspect anything.
Wazir was a prominent Jammu leader, and the president of J&K motor transporters’ association. He was an aid of top National Conference leaders Farooq Abdullah and Omar Abdullah.
Expressing his shock at Wazir’s death, Omar said he met him only a few days ago. “Shocked by the terrible news of the sudden death of my colleague Sardar T S Wazir, an ex member of the Legislative Council. It was only a few days ago that we sat together in Jammu not realising it was the last time I would be meeting him. May his soul rest in peace,” the former J&K chief minister tweeted.
Wazir’s body was sent for postmortem examination, officers said, adding they will have to wait for the autopsy report to ascertain the cause of death.