Police on Monday claimed to have cracked two murder cases — one involving an abducted teenager and the other a nurse.

Ved Prakash (16), an Intermediate student of BD College, Danapur, disappeared mysteriously after he had left his Kurji Balupar home on April 21. An FIR was registered regarding his abduction on May 1 after the family started getting ransom calls. The police on Monday recovered the remains of his body from the Sone riverbank near Koilwar, about 50km from Patna.

Later, the police claimed to have arrested three persons, including two professional shooters. They also claimed that a family feud, which had resulted out of the forced marriage of the deceased’s elder brother around four years ago, was the reason for Ved’s killing.

“Ved, originally from Bhojpur, used to live in his elder sister’s home in Patna for study. He had got a call on April 21 morning and left home saying that he was going for a party with his friends near the Sone and would be back soon. But he never returned prompting the family to lodge a missing diary. On May 1, they lodged an FIR of kidnapping as they were getting calls to pay Rs 10 lakh for Ved’s release. During early hours of Monday, a police team recovered Ved’s body buried in the sand by the riverbank. We have picked up three persons, who later confessed to the crime,” Patna senior superintendent of police Manu Maharaaj said.

“The boy was shot dead and killed the same day when he had gone missing. Ved’s elder brother, Om Prakash, had been forcefully married off to a girl living in Ara some four years ago. With the boy’s family not ready to take the girl, the girl’s brother, identified as Vinay, who is absconding at present, planned revenge against Ved’s family. He was helped by one Upendra, who is a distant relative of Vinay. It was Upendra who had hired the shooters and they were also paid Rs 1 lakh. They wanted to kill any member of Ved’s family and Ved, being a teenager and living away from home, was the softest target,” he said, adding that the police also recovered two pistols and three cellphones.

The police also claimed that they had solved the murder of Neetu Kumari (30), a nurse working in the Radhika Nursing Home. She was thrown near Munna Chowk after her throat was slit on April 20. The police identified the killer, Dheeraj (23), the brother-in-law of the deceased.

“The woman of Godda, Jharkhand, came to Patna around six months back to work. After the killer being identified, the police came to know that the man had fled to Goa, where he used to work in a noodles factory. A team was sent there and Dheeraj was nabbed after a lot of hard work. Neetu’s husband, Manoj Singh, works in Mumbai. The man, during interrogation, said Neetu had started to avoid him lately enraging him,” he said.

MISSING DIARY

April 21 lSixteen-year-old Ved Prakash, a student, goes missing after going out of his house in the Kurji Balupar area under Digha police station

May 1 lHis family lodges an FIR at Digha police station

May 5 lThe body of the teenager found in the Bihta police station area