Dr Sunil Mantri was arrested on Tuesday for allegedly killing his servant and later chopping his body into pieces, in Hoshangabad. (Source: Twitter/ANI) Dr Sunil Mantri was arrested on Tuesday for allegedly killing his servant and later chopping his body into pieces, in Hoshangabad. (Source: Twitter/ANI)

Dr Sunil Mantri, a government doctor arrested for allegedly cutting his driver to pieces at his home in Hoshangabad town, was on Wednesday remanded in police custody for three days.

The police said the 58-year-old orthopaedic doctor posted at a government hospital in Itarsi was allegedly being blackmailed by Veerendra Pachauri, his 30-year-old driver with whose wife he allegedly had an affair. The police have ruled out the involvement of the driver’s wife in the murder.

Mantri lived in a two-storey house in Anandnagar locality with his 75-year-old mother. He has told the police that his 26-year-old son and 23-year-old daughter work outside Madhya Pradesh and that his mother is currently in Bengaluru to attend a family function. He has also said that his wife Sushila died a year ago after she was admitted with a stomach ache to a hospital in Bhopal.

Hoshangabad SP Arvind Saxena told The Indian Express that he has sent a team to the hospital to verify if Mantri’s wife was admitted there.

According to police, Mantri had recently employed Veerendra as his driver. On Monday, police said, he gave an injection to Veerendra, the father of a five-year-old boy, and told him that his tooth pain will cease for at least three days.

Police said that after sedating Veerendra, the doctor him to a bathroom on the top floor, killed him and cut the body into many pieces till early on Tuesday. Once tired, police said, he slept for a few hours, then woke up and cut the body into more pieces. After disposing of his and Veerendra’s bloodstained clothes, he went to the hospital, marked his attendance and left after telling his colleagues that he had some work, police said. Once he had marked his attendance, police said, Mantri returned home, put the body pieces into a container full of acid.

The SP said the doctor had planned the murder and bought acid bottles, a surgical knife and some more cutting instruments.

Police said Mantri’s behaviour on Tuesday morning gave him away as neighbours saw him behaving suspiciously and frequently coming to the balcony. In the meantime, relatives of the driver reached Mantri’s house looking for him. On reaching his home, police found blood spilt all over and the body pieces in acid.

According to police, the driver’s wife worked at a boutique run by Mantri’s wife as an assistant. The police said Veerendra had extorted lakhs from the doctor by threatening to expose his affair.

The doctor, police said, had told them that he did not want to involve anyone, including the driver’s wife, in the murder because he thought they would break down once the police questioned them.

The police have seized some bloodstained clothes and the surgical knife from Mantri’s home

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