Daijiworld Media Network - Dehradun (MS)
Dehradun, Sep 2: The police of the city were informed by staff of a hospital on August 28 that they have found the body of a man in the parking area. Police reached the spot and while doing the inspection, they found a diary, hospital admission card and some documents from the car. The deceased was identified as Abdul Shakoor (35), a resident of Malappuram in the state of Kerala.
The hospital authorities told the police that they saw four men bringing the body in the car and abandoning the same in the parking lot. The body of the deceased bore many injury marks all over the body, which suggested that the victim was brutally tortured before he was killed. The police unearthed during inquiry that the deceased Shakoor was tortured by his co-workers over Rs 450 crore Bitcoin scam.
The Dehradun police have arrested Aravind C, Asif Ali, Sufail Mukhtar, Aftab Mohammad and Faris Mamnoon, all natives of Malappuram district of Kerala. Hunt is on for Aashiq, Arshad, Yasin, Rehaab and Muneef, who were part of the core team of Shakoor.
Giving details of the chilling murder, Arun Mohas Joshi, SSP of Dehradun said, "Shakoor was running a Bitcoin business in Kerala. He had collected an amount of Rs 450 crore from people of Kerala origin from various places of the state, which included Manjeri in Malappuram district. Shakoor had many teams to collect money from the investors. But the venture did not take off."
The deceased Shakoor was in financial distress as his proposed Bitcoin venture failed and the investors were after him to get back their money, according to the information given by an officer at the Perinthalmanna police, under whose limits, the residential area where the deceased lived falls.
Shakoor left Kerala with his core team of Aashiq, Arshad, Rehaab and Muneef. According to Dehradun police, Shakoor had confided in his close aide Aashiq that his Bitcoin account was hacked and he is planning to start his own cryptocurrency venture to pay back the investors. But Aashiq was sure that Shakoor must be having crores of rupees in cryptocurrency and he could lay his hands on the same if he would be able to get the password of Shakoor's account.
Aashique, the close aide of deceased Shakoor called Faris, Aravind, Asif, Sufail and Aftab and asked them to draw a plan to get the password of Shakoor's account. Shakoor was taken to Dehradun by Aashique on August 12. They rented house on August 26. The other members of the gang joined Aashiq and they started to torture the deceased Shakoor to know the password from him.
According to the Dehradun SSP Arun, "Aashiq and members of the gang, in a bid to get the password from Shakoor, tortured him so brutally that Shakoor lost his life. Panicking that crores of rupees would be lost with the death of Shakoor, the gang took him to a hospital thinking that he can be revived. However, the doctors at the hospital informed the members of the gang that Shakoor was dead. Not giving up their hope, the members of the gang took the body of Shakoor to another hospital, where they got the same response. Ultimately, they had no other option but to abandon the body in the car at the parking lot of the second hospital. Once they left the body of the deceased, they escaped from the spot."
Once the police got to know about the dead body from the hospital authorities, they tried to nab the murderers through the CCTV footage of the second hospital. The police formed different teams which searched for the culprits at various places like bus stands, dhabas and railway stations. The Dehradun police also took the help of the police of other states.
The police traced the men, through the features they obtained in the CCTV footage, to a bus that was plying to Saharanpur-Roorkee in the state of Uttarkhand. Both the police teams of Haridwar and Dehradun trailed the bus and stopped it. Because of the way they spoke and their appearance, the police could nab the five men, who killed the deceased Shakoor.