By IANS,
Mohali : Six youths have been booked for allegedly hatching a criminal conspiracy and murdering their 19-year-old friend during a picnic outing in Mohali district of Punjab, police said Sunday.
A police officer said Sahil Sharma, a Mohali resident, had gone for an outing Aug 10 near a canal in this Punjab town with his six friends, all 19-21 years of age. In the evening, Sahil’s friends informed the police in Rajpura in Mohali that he accidentally slipped into the Bhakra canal and was washed away by the heavy flow of water.
However, Sahil’s father Mohanlal Sharma refused to believe them and filed a criminal complaint with the police.
“On the complaint of Sahil’s father, we have registered a case against his six friends who were accompanying him for the excursion. Our investigation is on and so far we have not arrested anybody,” Rajpura Station House Officer (SHO) Amrik Singh told IANS.
“The body was fished out from the Bhakra canal near Patiala city Aug 14. We handed over the body to the deceased family after the post mortem,” Singh added.
Sahil was a student of BA-I at SD College in Chandigarh, some 30 km from here. While three of the six boys studied in the same college, others studied in different colleges of the city.
Mohanlal said: “Our son can never go to such far-away place without informing us. I have a strong doubt that his friends had forcibly thrown him in the canal due to some personal animosity.”
“Moreover, they did not even inform us about the incident. We came to know about it from the police officers late in the evening. Sahil never switched off his mobile phone but on that day his phone was also switched off,” he added.