3 engg students 'murder' drunk driver for car

NAGPUR: A roadside "goodwill' gesture curdled into murder. Three engineering students, who first offered to help a drunk driver, allegedly killed him hours later to grab his red Alto car and phones here. Police said Saturday the trio spotted 44-year-old spare parts supplier Suchit Bhojapure slumped over the steering wheel of his car late Thursday on a flyover at Wardhaman Nagar, an eastern Nagpur locality. They offered to park his vehicle safely.

Bhojapure, heavily intoxicated, allegedly asked the trio — Aryan Shende, 22, Rishabh Kamble, 20, and Anuj Ramesh, 19 — to drive him. What began as assistance stretched into a longer ride — first a delivery run to Bhiwapur, a town southeast of Nagpur, and then towards his home near Baba Trimurti Nagar in Wadi, on the city’s western outskirts.

A phone call to his wife shifted the night’s course, police said. She first asked them to bring him home, then reacted angrily when told they had reached a locked house, questioning why they brought back her “drunkard husband”. Investigators said the exchange led the students to believe the man was “unloved”.

Greed took over. Police said the trio allegedly decided to kill Bhojapure and keep his car, planning to change its number plate and colour. They allegedly drove to a deserted patch near a crematorium on Khadgaon Road in Wadi, dragged him out, and smashed his skull with stones. His body was stripped and dumped in bushes to hinder identification. The students fled with the car and two expensive mobile phones, police said.

Bhojapure’s father Upasrao had filed a missing complaint. The body was found Friday morning. Crime branch teams, led by senior inspector Dnyaneshwar Bhedodkar under senior officers Vasant Pardeshi, Rahul Maknikar and Abhijit Patil, cracked the case within 12 hours. CCTV footage, technical surveillance and call records pointed to Aryan, who had contacted Bhojapure’s wife. Picked up from a college campus in Nandanvan in east Nagpur, Aryan allegedly confessed. Bloodstains on a shoe undercut initial denials, police said. The others were rounded up soon after.

All three have been charged with murder and remanded in police custody.

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