Trader murdered over loan, alert app cab driver foils plan to dump corpse: 2 arrested
Telegraph | 14 March 2025
An alert app cab driver who was aware of the Madhyamgram trolley bag murder case has exposed a similar attempt by two businessmen to dispose of the body of a trader they had killed on Tuesday.
The body of Bhagaram Debasi, in his mid-thirties, was found stashed in a trolley bag that the two businessmen, who are also cousins, had put inside the boot of the cab driven by Rahul Adhikari who raised the alarm on the Kalyani Expressway.
The incident comes a fortnight after the arrest of Madhyamgram resident Arati Ghosh and her daughter Falguni who were spotted dragging a heavy, blue trolley bag along the Ahiritola Ghat on the morning of February 25. They were intercepted by people who questioned them about what was inside the bag. The police opened the bag to find a woman’s body inside.
Piecing together the latest murder, investigators from the Barrackpore police commissionerate said Bhagaram, a trader from Burrabazar, had gone to a godown in Girish Park on Tuesday afternoon to meet two of his business associates from whom he had taken a loan that he was finding hard to repay. There, he was offered a cup of coffee laced with sedatives. Police alleged that the two businessmen, Karan Singh, 35, and Krishpal Singh, 19, then murdered Bhagaram by slitting his throat and strangulating him with a nylon rope.
All of them hail from Rajasthan.
The police sources said the cousins packed the body in a blue trolley bag before going out for the day’s work. In the evening, one of them returned to the godown, picked up the trolley bag, and left for Nagerbazar in Dum Dum in a yellow taxi, where his aide joined him.
The police sources said the two then hailed an app cab from Nagerbazar and travelled around 14km to Sodepur and tried to dump the bag beside a water body off Kalyani Expressway. The men had searched for water bodies nearby on the Internet. The drop location for the app cab ride was set accordingly, the sources said.
“The murder came to light after the driver of the app cab raised the alarm when the two accused asked him to stop at a place adjoining a water body on Kalyani Expressway on Tuesday evening and directed him to pull out the trolley bag from the boot,” a police officer said on condition of anonymity as he is not authorised to speak on the issue.
Driver Adhikari told police that he had read about a mother-daughter duo being nabbed while they were transporting a woman’s mutilated body in a trolley bag so heavy they could barely drag it.
Adhikari said when he was taking the bag out of the boot of his vehicle, the weight prompted him to question the Singhs about what was inside it.
The police source said one of the two offered to pay Adhikari extra cash. When he refused to take it, the younger of the two men — Krishpal — walked away, talking on his mobile phone. Rahul grabbed Karan and alerted a patrol van of the Ghola police station that was doing its evening rounds.
Karan was arrested after the police opened the trolley bag. Along with the body, a bundle of currency notes amounting to ₹65,000, some blood-stained garments and plastic packets were found inside.
Krishpal, who had managed to slip away, was arrested late on Tuesday night from their rented accommodation on Muktaram Babu Street near Girish Park.
Police said Bhagaram was a garment trader who had borrowed ₹8 lakh from the two around Diwali last year and had failed to return the amount.
“On Tuesday afternoon, when Bhagaram visited the godown to meet the two and return a small part of the amount, the duo murdered him in a fit of rage,” said an officer.
The Singhs used to supply women’s garments to different shops around Burrabazar, Posta and other areas, investigators said.
Bhagaram, too, used to supply women’s garments to shops across the city, police said. He also sent consignments to Nepal and Bangladesh.
During the turmoil in Bangladesh, Bhagaram ran into trouble when several of his orders were cancelled. He then borrowed the money from the Singhs, the police said.