The cold-blooded murder of Amit Agarwal came to light today after Meghalaya police arrested four persons, including gang leader Ranjan Biswas, from Assam.
The four were picked up from different places of the state since Saturday.
While Ranjan was picked up from Mangaldoi on Saturday, the other three, Bapon Biswas, Chaitanya Biswas and Ananda Biswas, were apprehended from Sunduwa village in Morigaon last night.
Ranjan, too, hails from Sunduwa but had fled to Morigaon after committing the crime.
Amit was abducted last Saturday while he was returning to Guwahati from Byrnihat on his motorcycle.
The four had waylaid Amit took him to a desolate area and hacked him to death.
Amit’s father had lodged a missing person report at the Byrinihat outpost that very night.
The police recovered the bike the following day from a jungle.
That day, the kidnappers also contacted the family, based in Guwahati’s Beltola, and asked for Rs 10 lakh for Amit’s release.
They later scaled down the amount to Rs 8 lakh.
On the night of July 25, without the knowledge of the police, Amit’s relatives handed over the money to the gang leader and it was agreed that Amit will be released somewhere along the Assam-Meghalaya border “very soon”.
“The family had acted on their own and handed over the money to Ranjan, even though by that time Amit was already dead,” a Meghalaya police official investigating the case said.
The body was recovered from a jungle in Byrinihat this evening.
All the four arrested worked in Byrnihat, around 30km from Guwahati, as daily wage earners.
Amit’s father owns a stone quarry in Byrnihat and the young man used to visit the quarry regularly on business purposes.
Morigaon police acted on a request by Meghalaya police who had zeroed in on the four as the kidnappers after eyewitnesses reported about their “suspicious activities” on the day of the abduction.
Morigaon superintendent of police Aravinda Kalita said all the four have confessed to their involvement in the kidnapping and the subsequent killing.
“They narrated how they planned the kidnapping and how it was executed. They also confessed to having killed the youth soon after they kidnapped him and then burying the body in a jungle,” Kalita said.
He said all four have criminal background and were involved robbery and theft.
Incidentally, the four had initially planned to kidnap a child for ransom but changed their mind later.