Six Held For Rourkela Youth’s Murder, Body Recovered In Goods Train In Chhattisgarh

Rourkela: Police have nabbed six of the seven persons involved in the alleged murder of a resident of the steel city of Rourkela, whose body was recovered from a coal-laden train in the neighbouring Chhattisgarh recently.

Srinivas Rao (28), a native of Deogarh district, went missing on September 24. He was residing in Gopabandhu Palli here and working at a cloth store. The alleged murder was suspected to be the fallout of his relationship with a girl in the city.

According to police sources, Srinivas was in a  relationship with a 15-year-old girl, who was the daughter of one of his distant relatives. Her family members had been opposing this alleged affair and when Srinivas paid no heed to their warning, they hatched a plot to eliminate him.

On September 24, the accused picked Srinivas from his house and thrashed him to death with iron rods and wooden planks. They then carried the body to a railway track at Gopabandhu Palli and dumped it in a coal-laden train, heading towards Chhattisgarh’s Raigarh.

While Srinivas’ family members lodged a missing complaint with the Plantsite police here, some workers spotted the body during unloading at the destination and informed the local police.

Raigarh police informed their Rourkela counterparts about the recovery of the body. Four persons were also detained for questioning. Following this, a team of the Plantsite police went to Raigarh to bring back the body, which was handed over to the kin of the deceased after postmortem, the sources added.