LUCKNOW: An 18-year friendship ended in murder when a computer coaching institute owner was killed by his best friend for a gold chain worth Rs 5 lakh in Kanpur.
The accused, who planned the crime using YouTube tutorials and disguised himself in a burqa, was ultimately identified by police through his masculine gait captured on CCTV footage and arrested on Friday.
The accused, Mohit Dwivedi, executed the plan on the night of May 31 during the IPL final at the coaching institute of Prakash Chandra Gupta, 47, in the Azadnagar locality under the Nawab Ganj police station limits in Kanpur. Gupta had been running Data Expert Institute for many years.
On May 31, Gupta told his younger brother, Vikas, that he would return home after watching the Tata IPL final at his office.
Knowing that Gupta was staying overnight to watch the match, Mohit arrived wearing a burqa and women's footwear to conceal his identity and attacked him.
Inside the room, a violent scuffle broke out as Mohit attempted to snatch a heavy gold chain from an intoxicated Gupta. During the struggle, Gupta was shoved aggressively, causing him to fall to the floor and sustain fatal head injuries.
Mohit then fled the scene with the chain and a gold bracelet, leaving his friend bleeding to death.
The next morning, family members discovered Gupta's body lying in a pool of blood inside his office. While initial police assessments suggested he may have suffered an accidental fall following a medical emergency, the missing jewellery prompted a deeper investigation.
According to police sources, after investigators failed to find any substantial leads, Kanpur Police Commissioner Raghubir Lal reviewed local surveillance footage and became suspicious of a burqa clad figure because of the person's masculine gait.
The suspect was tracked through footage from around 100 CCTV cameras. Investigators eventually traced the burqa clad figure to a car where Mohit Dwivedi had changed into the disguise. This led police to identify, track down and arrest him.
Police sources claimed that, confident his plan would succeed, Mohit spent the morning after the murder mingling with the victim's grieving family and casually speaking with investigators at the crime scene.
He then went on to take a competitive teaching examination and travelled to Lucknow the following day.
The victim's family remains shattered by what they described as the ultimate betrayal.
"We never expected Mohit to do this," said Gupta's brother Vikas.
