delhi

Updated: Feb 23, 2015 09:00 IST

A 30-year-old travel operator from Ghaziabad has been arrested for allegedly killing a man who apparently had been stalking his sister for the last 4-5 years.

Police said the accused, Amit Sharma, lured Pankaj Chauhan (24) to Kyard Mandoli village at Pauri Garhwal in Uttarakhand where he first strangulated him to death and then chopped and buried the body.

Amit was picked up on Saturday night and after sustained interrogation broke down and confessed to the crime. The police have since recovered the body parts of Chauhan and the weapon used in the crime.

According to investigators, Amit was angry since Pankaj — a water supplier — regularly stalked his 19-year-old sister. Amit had shifted his family from Vijay Nagar in Ghaziabad to Vaishali, but Pankaj follower her there too.

“Pankaj regularly followed my sister on his bike at bus stops or whenever she went out. He followed her even in Vaishali. I later sent my sister to our native place in Uttarakhand, where too he visited her with some of his friends. My sister was upset,” Amit reportedly told the police.

He claimed that he later even sent his sister to his aunt’s place in Dehradun, where too Pankaj followed her and somehow managed to get the girl to even break her engagement, a police officer said quoting Amit.“He (Pankaj) used to be our neighbour. So, we took the matter up with his family several times too. But he didn’t mend his ways. My sister didn’t want to marry him and had even threatened to commit suicide if she was forced to,” Amit said.On February 1, Amit allegedly lured Pankaj to Uttarakhand on the pretext of getting him to meet his sister.

“There he laced the victim’s drink with sleeping pills, strangled him to death and chopped his body into five parts. He later buried the body near a trench outside the village and left for Ghaziabad. After an FIR was filed on February 18, we picked up Amit as an accused in the case. He broke down during questioning and told us where the body was buried,” Ghaziabad superintendent of police Ajay Pal told HT.Sources close to the victim’s family said that Pankaj’s legs, arms and head had been severed.“The accused has also claimed that his elder brother had committed suicide due to the harassment at the hands of Pankaj. His mother had later died of shock from her son’s death. We are verifying these claims,” Pal added.