Lost crucial evidence in Manchanda murder case due to Gurugram cops delay: Delhi Police tells SC

The Delhi police has told the Supreme Court that crucial evidence in connection with the murder of 31-year-old real estate professional Yuvraj Singh Manchanda was lost due to the delay by Haryana police in uploading the information about the unidentified dead body and its subsequent cremation without any intimation on the inter-state crime tracking network.

The Gurugram police commissioner has separately responded to the court’s September 22 order, which will also be taken up on Monday.

In an affidavit filed in a matter where the court is tracking nationwide directions on action against missing persons to effect their timely recovery, Delhi police commissioner Anurag Kumar said Delhi resident Manchanda was killed in Gurugram by his former colleague Anya Vatsa and her friend Sanyam Sachdeva.

Manchanda, a resident of Sarita Vihar, went missing after leaving for Gurugram from Lajpat Nagar market on the evening of September 6. His family filed a missing complaint at the Lajpat Nagar police station on September 11 since the suspects had been kept sending messages from his phone as if he was alive.

Delhi Police registered a report and uploaded his details, including his photograph, on the inter-state Zonal Integrated Police Network portal on the same day.

The Gurugram Police, on the other hand, recovered a highly decomposed, unidentified body from sewage-filled land in Badshahpur on the morning of September 10. The body was preserved for 72 hours and cremated on September 14 following an autopsy, along with belongings including clothes.

The Delhi police was able to link the body to their victim only after the arrest of the suspects who allegedly told investigators about the location where they had dumped the body.

Responding to a September 22 order by a bench of justices Ahsanuddin Amanullah and R Mahadevan, the Delhi police commissioner said the efficacy of ZIPNet and CCTNS (Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems) in matching missing persons with unidentified dead bodies depends upon the contemporaneous uploading of both by every participating police unit, and upon a cross-search of these databases before an unidentified dead body is disposed of.

He stated that the Haryana police registered a DD entry on the recovery of Manchanda’s body on September 14 and it was only on September 29, that the Delhi police received the last remains (bones) of the deceased from PS Badshahpur in Gurugram.

“The cremation ground where the body had been cremated was also visited and efforts were made to recover the bullet lead; however, the same could not be found,” the affidavit said, indicating about a crucial loss of evidence in the case.

The Delhi police stated that since it came to know about the missing complaint, it acted with “promptitude” by registering a first information report (FIR) and placing the details on ZIPNet. The information was circulated to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), the Missing Persons Squad and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on the same day.

Having caught the accused from Uttarakhand, the police have since recovered their mobile phones and laptop to gather further evidence. The relevant CCTV footage has been seized and notices have been issued to the banks concerned of the accused persons.

Manchanda was working with a realty firm where Vatsa was earlier employed.

On September 6, he was out with his sisters shopping at Lajpat Nagar ahead of his wedding. After he received a phone call, he asked his sisters to leave and headed to Gurugram promising to return in the night. As he failed to return, his sisters tried to contact him. Vatsa kept his phone with her and kept giving Manchanda’s family that he was still alive.

The forensic team has since been able to reconstruct the crime scene, the pick-up point, the recovery place, the body-dump site and the places where the accused parked the car with the dead body till it was dumped in a drain in Sector 70, Gurugram.

The Delhi police has seized a pistol allegedly at the instance of Vatsa.The car of the deceased has also been traced and recovered on the statement made by Vatsa, police said.