Police stated today, Thursday, February 29, that a 20-year-old BBA student from Greater Noida was allegedly strangled to death by four friends following an argument and that his body was buried six feet deep in an Amroha field.
According to officials, three of the suspects were taken into custody on Wednesday evening (February 28) after fighting with the police in Greater Noida, leaving the trio with gunshot wounds to their legs.
Both the accused and the victim, according to the police, were residents of the Gajraula neighbourhood in the Amroha district of Uttar Pradesh, where the murder took place on Tuesday night, February 27.
Who was the deceased?
The student hailed from a business family and enrolled in a private university in Greater Noida to pursue a Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) degree, according to PTI.
Deputy Commissioner of Police (Greater Noida), Saad Miya Khan, stated that an FIR was filed at the nearby Dadri police station and an investigation was started when he did not come back to the university hostel after leaving it on Monday, February 26.
"On February 27, the police received information that Bennett University student Yash Mittal had not returned to the hostel since February 26. Immediately, police teams were formed to investigate this case. When CCTV footage was reviewed, it was found that he left the university campus safely in a car while talking to someone on the phone," Khan said.
Call data records, which were also investigated as part of the probe, led the police to a few suspects, including his friend Rachit Nagar who told the police about a party in Gajraula where Mittal was invited by his friends, the officer said.
"During the probe, Rachit Nagar told police that he, Yash Mittal, Shivam Singh, Shubham Singh, Sushant Verma and Shubham Chaudhary, who lived in Gajraula (Amroha), are friends with each other since November 2023," the DCP said.
The party
"On February 26, they had called Yash Mittal for the party in Gajraula. He went there during which an argument broke out between him and others, after which, he was killed and his body was buried inside a farmland in Gajraula. We recovered the body from the farmland on Wednesday (February 28)," Khan said.
According to a police source familiar with the investigation, the altercation erupted between the accused, all of whom are in their late twenties and financially disadvantaged, and Mittal, whose family is in the electronics sector, after he told them that they were "surviving and having parties on his money".
On Wednesday, February 28, evening, the police learned that the culprits were in Greater Noida's Dadri area. During a combing operation, a shootout broke out, in which the suspects received bullet wounds to their legs and were later detained, authorities said.
Shubham Chaudhary, the fourth accused, is at large and being sought by police, according to reports.
"The accused told the police that they had killed Yash on February 27 but to mislead the police and his family, they sent ransom messages on February 28," DCP Khan said.
The police said they have lodged two FIRs against the accused — first for murder, criminal conspiracy, and evidence destruction, and the second after the encounter for an attempt to murder and under the Arms Act.
Further legal proceedings in the case are underway, the police added.
