BHOPAL: A middle-aged builder from Maharashtra’s Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar district has been found murdered in the jungles of southwestern Madhya Pradesh.
The half-burnt body of the builder Kishore Lokhre (he was missing since October 3) was found in the dense forests under the Sanawad police station area of the Khargone district of southwestern MP on Wednesday.
The murdered builder hailed from a very powerful and influential family of Kamlapur village of Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar district in Maharashtra. According to sources in Maharashtra, Lokhre’s brother was the deputy sarpanch of the village panchayat and the family was associated with the Shiv Sena (UBT) group.
The murdered builder’s driver Javed has been taken into custody by the police in Madhya Pradesh, but three others (all local residents of MP’s Khargone and Khandwa districts) are on the run.
According to sources privy to the investigation, the lure for getting pure gold at half price from some locales in the Khargone-Khandwa region of MP is suspected to have brought the builder there.
Javed is believed to have played a key role in bringing him there owing to Lokhre’s lure for cheap gold. “In the past too, the builder had sourced cheap gold from those elements in MP via Javed, who was very trusted by the Lokhre family,” a source privy to the ongoing investigations said.
While Lokhre who came to MP last month stayed back at a lodge in Omkareshwar (Khandwa), he sent driver Javed back to bring Rs 15 lakh from Maharashtra to get the gold at half price from locals in Khargone.
A few days after Javed returned with the money to MP, Lokhre’s phone started sounding switched off on September 27. When Javed returned to Maharashtra on October 3, the builder’s family asked him about Lokhre, but he told them that Lokhre had gone to Kolkata.
However, unable to contact Lokhre, his kin came to MP, after lodging a missing person complaint in Maharashtra. The MP and Maharashtra police found Lokhre’s half-burnt body in the jungles on Wednesday, after which Javed was detained by police and a case of murder was registered at Sanawad police station in MP’s Khargone district.
A primary police probe suggests that Javed, out of the lure of Rs 15 lakh brought from Maharashtra for Lokhre to buy cheap gold, strangulated the builder with the help of local contacts and then tried to burn the body in the jungles.
Investigations also suggest that after the murder, Javed had gone to Mumbai to buy a tempo.