Indian man tries to fake his own death, arrested for murder

The story is straight out of a movie: A man who attempted to fake his death by murdering a builder and trying to pass off his victim's body as his own has been arrested in India.

According to the police, he did it to avoid being charged with another murder. 

The man who has been identified as Sudesh Kumar has been charged in connection with the elopement and killing of his daughter in 2018, but not convicted of the killing. He is alleged to have killed his daughter after she eloped.

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Kumar was released last year when the authorities released some prisoners in order to decongest or reduce overcrowding in prisons and prevent Coronavirus outbreaks.

Last month, police located a body in Ghaziabad, on the outskirts of the Indian capital, New Delhi. The corpse was wearing Kumar's clothing and carrying his identification card.

An AFP report quotes the police superintendent Iraj Raja as saying that "The body was partially burnt and its face was beyond recognition."

"We traced it (the body) back to (Kumar's) home and got his wife to identify the body. She promptly identified it as his husband's body. However, we were not convinced."

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Police caught Kumar outside his home on Friday after getting a tip that he was still alive.

"Upon being interrogated, he spilled the beans," Raja said.

Reportedly Kumar had befriended a mason and invited him to his house on the pretext of doing some repair work, giving him a set of clothes to wear and plying him with alcohol before beating him to death. 

Apparently, Kumar had befriended a mason and invited him to his house on the pretext of doing some repair work. He then gave the mason a set of clothes to put on before plying him with alcohol. Finally, when the man was in an inebriated state, Kumar proceeded to beat him to death, before burning the corpse so as to mislead the police and mess up identification.

Kumar and his wife have both been charged with murder, according to the police superintendent.

(With inputs from agencies)