delhi

Updated: Oct 22, 2017 13:29 IST

A man who allegedly hid his bartender friend’s body in his refrigerator at his south Delhi house used his skills with the knife as a chef to cut the body into three pieces, police said.

Investigators said evidence suggested the murder was planned. “The accused brought the murder weapon (a meat cleaver) from the kitchen of Fio Country Kitchen and Bar,” said Chinmoy Biswal, Additional DCP (south), on Saturday.

The accused, Badal Mandal, worked as a chef at the restaurant-cum-bar inside the Garden of Five Senses in Saket. The victim, Vipin Joshi, was a bartender at the same place and was his friend for seven years.

Mandal was arrested from a relative’s home in Odisha’s Rourkela on Wednesday, eight days after he allegedly killed Joshi, chopped his body and stuffed it in his fridge at his home in Saidujalab, an urban village near Saket.

The alleged motive behind the murder emerged after Mandal was interrogated. “He suspected his friend has a relationship with his wife. He said some incidents confirmed his suspicion,” said Biswal. “But he has been unable to produce any evidence to support his allegations,” Biswal added.

“Badal was filled with hatred for Joshi and wanted revenge. He planned to kill Joshi,” Biswal alleged. Badal allegedly sent his wife and two children to her parents’ home in Jamshedpur days before the murder.

“At the restaurant, he applied for leave from October 8 to 23. In the meantime, he took a cleaver from the restaurant’s kitchen,” Biswal said in support of the theory that the murder was pre-mediated.

On the night of October 8, Joshi and Badal bought alcohol together and visited the latter’s rented home to consume it. “Joshi had a few drinks and was smoking a cigarette when Badal struck him with a cleaver from behind. When Joshi fell unconscious, Badal struck a few more times to ensure he died,” said Biswal.

Badal has told his interrogators that he dealt the fatal blow in a moment of rage when Joshi said something objectionable about his wife but the police are still probing it.

Police said Badal allegedly got garbage bags, used the same cleaver to chop the body, wrapped them and kept them inside the fridge.

“He was unable to immediately dispose of the body because it is a densely populated neighbourhood. He thought the fridge would prevent the body from decomposing,” said another investigator.

Badal locked his room from outside and fled to his native village in West Bengal’s Purulia. The police found the body parts in the fridge on October 14 when they launched a search on a missing complaint from Joshi’s brother.