Body found in Ambala is of missing UK hotelier: Cops
Wednesday, 03/06/2015
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JALANDHAR: Police have confirmed that the body that was fished from an Ambala canal on Monday is of missing UK-based Punjab-born millionaire hotelier Ranjit Singh Power.
They have claimed that a family friend of the hotelier has identified the body from an iron bracelet (karra) on the right arm. “Power’s family had sent NRI Darshan Singh, who had landed in Jalandhar a few days ago, to identify the body, even as it didn’t send any authorisation letter,” said a police officer.
The autopsy panel of Dr Davinder Singh, Dr Rakesh Chopra, Dr Inder Pal Singh and Dr Ramesh Kumar have in their report mentioned strangulation marks around the victim’s neck.
Before the post-mortem examination, the team had taken out two teeth, a small bone, and a few hair from the body and given these to the police; and the NRI’s family friend gave it in written to the police and doctors that these, too, belonged to the hotelier.
“We are confirming that the body we have is of the NRI (non-resident Indian). Darshan Singh sent its pictures to the hotelier’s family in the UK,” deputy commissioner of police (DCP) Rajinder Singh said here on Tuesday. Asked about any authority letter from the hotelier’s family to the friend who came to identify the body, DCP said that the police were yet to receive any, adding: “The two teeth, hair, and the small bone taken out before autopsy have been kept for the DNA test.”
Even after confirming that the body is of the hotelier, the police have not reached any conclusion on what drove hotelier’s friend Baldev Singh Deol and his distant nephew Sukhdev Singh to kill him.
“During interrogation of accused Sukhdev Singh, we found that Power and Deol were partners in two hotels — one in Goa and the other in Dubai — and Deol wanted a payment of £2 lakh (about `1.95 crore) from Power to be compensated for some losses in business,” said a police officer, adding: “Only when we bring Deol here that he’d be able to give us the details.”
On Monday night, a city police team had brought an unidentified body from Ambala in Haryana, suspecting it could be of the missing NRI. They say that accused Sukhdev Singh had told them that Deol and he had thrown it into the Bhakra canal near Anandpur Sahib on May 8 after strangulating Power.
