Tags:
Journalism of Courage
NEW DELHI, MARCH 18: The Crime Branch is now trying to make up for some of the irreparable damage done by the east district police in the investigations into the brutal murder of Outlook illustrator Irfan Hussain. A team has been sent to Bulundshahar in Uttar Pradesh to locate his white Maruti 800 (no. DL-3C-K-5002). Crime Branch sleuths are also combing a three-km radius around the area where Irfan’s body was found.
Irfan last spoke to his wife Muneera at 10.45 p.m. on March 8 on his cell phone. He said that he was calling from Mayur Vihar and would be home (in Sahibabad, UP) in 15 minutes. Around 3 a.m. on March 9, when there was no sign of her husband, a worried Muneera called his friends. At 11.30 a.m. that day, the Sarojini Nagar police finally registered a missing person’s report.
It was just a question of flashing a simple wireless message about a missing car. But the east district police failed to do this. There was no co-ordination with either the UP or Haryana police. And this, when it is a known fact that cars are routinely stripped in certain areas of the Capital like Mayapuri, sometimes even coming out of workshops with a new coat of paint and a new number plate. Or alternatively, they are driven across the relatively deserted border check-posts into complete anonymity.
Even as the crime branch team left for UP yesterday, the east district police were yet to contact their counterparts in Gurgaon, Faridabad, Ghaziabad and Noida in connection with the case.
Bahadurgarh, Haryana, SHO Badan Singh was really surprised. “Who Irfan? What case are you talking about? The Delhi Police had not asked us to look for anyone. I have not been informed about any such case,” he said.
Senior Superintendent of Police of Gautam Budh Nagar, Noida, Devender Singh Chauhan, had the same story to tell. “Till today the Delhi Police have not contacted me regarding Irfan’s case. One of Irfan’s relatives in Noida had called up the SP (City) R.K. Chaturvedi about Irfan’s missing car. We flashed messages thereafter.”
At around 11 a.m. on March 13 while six teams of policemen were looking for Irfan’s cellular phone and his car in the Tughlaqabad area, his highly-decomposed body was found near the highway in the Ghazipur area of east Delhi.
His hands and legs had been tied and there were 28 stab wounds all over his body, including a deep gash across his throat. According to the post-mortem report, the body had been lying there for at least 48 hours, if not more. It also indicated that Irfan was murdered between 4 a.m. and 5 a.m. on March 9.
A doctor on the team conducting the autopsy said that the maggot formation indicated that his body had been lying in an open area for a while, before it was dumped off the Ghazipur highway. Taking a cue from this, the crime branch is now looking for clues — six days later — in the three-km radius around the area where the body was found.
