iPhone delivery gone wrong: Executive was ‘choked to death’ with laptop cable

While the prime accused in the murder of a delivery executive was still out of police’s bounds, the latter’s body could not be recovered from a canal where a search for it was taken up a day ago, officials said on Tuesday.

Bharat Kumar, 32, was now believed to have been choked to death by three men, as against two earlier, by a laptop charger cable in the Chinhat area of Lucknow where he had gone to deliver an iPhone and another smartphone on September 23, police said. He was allegedly murdered by the customer who had ordered the phone and two of the latter’s aides. Only one of them, Akash Sharma, 21, was in police custody as of Tuesday evening.

Meanwhile, a team of State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) was carrying out the search operation in Indira Canal, about 10 km away from the crime scene, where Bharat’s body was believed to have been discarded.

SDRF sub-inspector Kumar Saurav Singh said a team of divers was trying recover the body but the swift flow of water in the canal was proving to be a challenge.

Trio waited 5 hours to discard body

Police officials aware of the investigation said Bharat Kumar and the key accused, Gajendra Dubey, 22, knew each other from before. When Bharat reached the location, a hardware store owned by Gajendra, to deliver the phones, the latter was present there with Akash and one Himanshu.

The trio took him inside a room where Bharat was beaten and choked with the cable of a laptop charger, they said citing Akash’s confession, adding that the body lay there for nearly five hours before it was taken to the canal.

“The body was kept in the room for five hours… Later at night, they bagged the body and drove to Indira Canal, nearly 10 km away, in a car and tossed it in the water,” said an official on the condition of anonymity.

Gajendra, who had previously worked as a delivery executive himself, planned the murder, he added. “After taking him to the room, the trio took away cash and other products Bharat was carrying for delivery. When he protested, they beat him black and blue, and then choked him to death,” the official explained.

While the accused tried erase all evidences against them, one of the work calls between Gajendra and Bharat recorded by the company that the latter worked for was helping the police, the officials noted.

While Gajendra runs a hardware store, Akash and Himanshu work as carpenters.