india

Updated: Jan 13, 2019 16:13 IST

With the arrest of a local Bharatiya Janata Party functionary, his three sons and a fifth person in Indore, the police claim to have solved the murder of a 22-year-old woman Congress worker who has been missing for the past two years .

The killers were inspired by the Hindi film Drishyam, in which the police are misled by a killer who plants a dog’s body in a place where the police expect to find human remains, the police said.

Deputy inspector general of police (Indore) Harinarayanchari Mishra said the police had arrested BJP functionary Jagdish Karotia (65), his sons Ajay (36), Vijay (38) and Vinay (31) and their friend Neelesh Kashyap (28) for the murder of Twinkle Dagre (20).

The accused strangled Dagre to death and then burnt her body to destroy the evidence. Dagre was murdered because she had been pressuring Jagdish to marry her and live with her after they had an affair.

This was not acceptable to Jadgish and his family.

DIG Mishra said the clues they found over the months were so contradictory that they had to take recourse to the Brain Electrical Oscillation Signature (BEOS) test of three of the accused and also the Dagre’s parents before they could arrive at the truth.

This is the first time that BEOS test, which is done only in a lab in Ahmedabad, has been used to solve a murder case in Madhya Pradesh, the DIG said.

BEOS is a technique by which a suspect’s participation in a crime is detected by eliciting electrophysiological impulses from the brain during questioning.

The official said on the day of the murder, October 16, 2016, all the accused took Dagre to show her a plot of land which Jagdish had promised to buy in her name.

They killed Dagre there, and stuffed the body in their SUV and took it to a secluded place and burnt it.

The Karotias knew that they would be suspects when the victim was found missing and to mislead the police, they also dug a grave nearby and buried a dog’s body there.

Then they anonymously tipped off the police saying that something suspicious had happened there on the night of the murder and that the Karotias were behind it. But when the police dug the spot, they found the dog’s body.

There were several other reasons why the police were misled, the DIG said.

“Twinkle had left her house in a huff on 16th morning and she had sent text messages to Jagdish complaining about her parents.

“Also she had registered a case of beating against her father, and also registered four other complaints against him, so it appeared that the deceased had a grudge against her parents and not the Karotias,” the official said.

“Again to mislead the police, Ajay Karotia took the deceased’s mobile to Barwaha and activated it. Barwaha was chosen because the deceased had been engaged to a boy from Barwaha and police wasted quite some time investigating the fiancée.”