Gurgaon: Station house officer (SHO) of Badshapur police station, Rajesh Kumar, has been suspended over the handling of the case of 31-year-old Delhi resident Yuvraj Manchanda, whose unidentified body was recovered from a water-filled pit in Sector 70 on Sept 10 and cremated four days later without being identified, officials said.Officials did not specify the lapses, but sources said the action was linked to alleged negligence in following procedures for identifying and disposing of the body. “A departmental enquiry was initiated into the proceedings of the case and action has been taken based on it,” an official confirmed.Inspector Manoj Kumar, earlier posted at Sector 56 police station, has been appointed the new SHO. ASI Sahun Khan, the investigating officer in the case, was suspended earlier after an internal review into alleged negligence.TOI had earlier reported that Haryana DGP Ajay Singhal admitted to lapses in the way the body was cremated. “There is a proper SOP that if you find an unidentified body, it cannot be kept for more than three days. We, thus, followed the SOP and cremated it. Yes, there were certain lapses and the court has taken cognisance of them. We will look into those and issue appropriate directions or make amendments, if required,” Singhal had said. He did not specify the lapses, but Gurgaon police’s own compliance report to the Delhi court hearing the case raises several questions about how the body was handled.Yuvraj, a real estate professional, left his Delhi home on Sept 6, telling his family he was going to Gurgaon for a meeting. Delhi Police later alleged that he was killed that night by his former colleague Anya Vats and her partner Sanyam Sachdeva, who were arrested in Uttarakhand on Sept 16. According to Delhi Police, the body was kept in a vehicle for about two days before being dumped near Badshapur on Sept 8.Police recovered a decomposed body from the pit on Sept 10 but could not establish its identity. Yuvraj’s family lodged a missing-person complaint at Lajpat Nagar police station on Sept 11. On Sept 12, Delhi Police uploaded his photograph and details on ZIPNET, a database used by police forces of several northern states to share information on missing persons and unidentified bodies. The body recovered in the city was cremated on Sept 14, still unidentified. Gurgaon Police uploaded its details on ZIPNET only on Sept 16, two days after the cremation.The court also flagged a discrepancy between the autopsy report prepared by Gurgaon authorities and Delhi Police’s findings. Delhi Police are probing Yuvraj’s death as murder and allege that he was shot dead and the body dumped in a drain. The autopsy, however, attributed the death to asphyxia due to ante-mortem drowning. “How can you arrive at such different conclusions?” the court asked police.
