Ranchi, March 13: The needle of suspicion of a constable?s murder points at ?handia? (rice beer) sellers in and around the Kunjla village under the Murhu police station area.
Police hope the ?handia? sellers would give some information about the killing which took place on Friday.
A joint team of Khunti and Murhu police have begun a raid operation to arrest the ?handia? sellers following the brutal murder of a Khunti police constable two days ago.
Police sources said the body was recovered last evening from a place frequented by ?handia? consumers.
The Murhu police recovered the mutilated body of constable Subhash Sharma from Kunjla village, 4 km away from Khunti. Sharma was missing since March 11. Sharma?s head was smashed into pieces by a heavy stone. There were also attempts to be burn the body.
Khunti DSP Madhusudan Bari said, ?Sharma?s body was recovered from a small field, where handia is sold. The Khunti haat is not very far from there and people come to this place for a drink while returning from the market.?
Investigations revealed that Sharma might have had a fight with either some customers or the sellers which took a ugly turn and might have led to the brutal murder.
At present, the police?s needle of suspicion is on the ?handia? sellers. ?And as Kunjla is not a very big place, I?ve given directions to catch each of them. It is they who can give us some idea what happened,? Bari added.
The police are sure that Sharma had been murdered by the locals. ?We don?t think an outsider has killed him. There could be two reasons for his murder.
The first, the policeman had a fight with one of the ?handia? sellers. Usually, it is the women who sell rice beer. But here, men too sell rice beer,? said another official.
Another angle may be that he had a squabble with the customers and they killed him.
?They then tried to burn the body to remove all evidence of the killing. Sharma was not wearing the police uniform at that time. We are working on both these points for now,? he added.
Sharma was deputed in Murhu a few days ago to guard the centres of the on going matriculation examinations.
A police personnel of the Murhu police station said, ?He was at the police station until 8.30 pm in the evening on March 11. He said he was going to one of his friend?s place and would spend the night there.?
?The next day he called up the police station at 6 in the morning and said he had started for the police station and would be there in half an hour. But Sharma never came. We waited till evening and then started a search operation. His body was recovered at around 7.30 pm yesterday?, he said.