Filed away as accident, Uttar Pradesh man’s death turns out to be cold-blooded murder-for-hire

BAREILLY: Abdul Kalam’s blood-splattered body was found lying by a road at Baddi in Himachal Pradesh on Friday last week. It seemed certain it was an accident and his family buried his body at his village, Laxmipur, in UP’s Budaun on Monday. But while going over CCTV footage, in which they expected to witness a crash or accident, they saw two men taking Abdul away on a bike and then, after a while, returning without him.A second autopsy found a bullet in his neck, which had been missed the first time. He had been murdered.
Abdul, 27, was a carpenter. There was little to do at sleepy Laxmipur and Baddi, as a pharmaceutical hub, meant good business. He teamed up with a relative from Badaun, Mohammad Shamshul, 30, and set up shop in Baddi. That’s where he had been living.
“His head was badly crushed when the body was found,” Baddi ASP Vivek Chahal told TOI. “There seemed to be a penetrating injury in the head but the first autopsy (conducted on July 23) could not say why.” They concluded he may have been hit by something in an accident or rocks may have come crashing down the hills through which the road passes. But they found evidence of neither.
Working their way backwards, they started going over CCTV footage from nearby areas. “A petrol pump was close to the site where Abdul’s body was found,” Chahal said. “Their footage from July 22 night showed three men on a bike, among them Abdul, going towards the site. Later, when they were seen riding back, Abdul wasn’t with them.” The timeline matched Abdul’s time of death.
But it wouldn't alone prove Abdul had been killed.
First, the cops identified the two men — Mohammad Shahid, 21, and Mohammad Faizan, 23 — who were neighbours of Abdul’s family in Budaun. What were they doing 500km away at Baddi? “When we went to their village to question them, they were absconding,” Chahal said. Meanwhile, Abdul’s body was exhumed on Friday. “The second autopsy found a bullet in his neck,” Chahal added. “It was enough proof and we launched a manhunt. Shahid was located in Chandigarh and Faizan at another place in Haryana. When they were questioned, they said they had been hired by Shamshul to kill Abdul.”
Shamshul, police said, owed Abdul money. Unwilling to deal with the ongoing dispute over that, he got him killed. “He was arrested from Budaun,” the district’s SSP Sankalp Sharma told TOI. An FIR has been registered against Shamshul, Shahid and Faizan for murder. Charges of criminal conspiracy and causing disappearance of evidence may be added.