The Judicial Magistrate First Class (JMFC) Court in Bhubaneswar on Sunday granted permission to  the Commissionerate police to take the three accused involved in the alleged murder of scribe Navin Das’ son Manish Anurag on a four-day remand.

The Infocity police had produced the accused Amrit Pritam Biswal, Dinesh Mohapatra and Mrutyunjay Mishra before the court and had sought five–day custody of the accused for interrogation.

The trio was arrested on Saturday on the charges of murder of Manish, whose body was recovered from a pond at Patrapada on October 10, However, the mobile phone of deceased Manish is yet to be recovered. Besides, the role of woman, who was seen in CCTV footage near the hotel South City, in the crime was yet to be ascertained. Earlier on Saturday, city DCP Umashankar Dash revealed that Manish was killed over dispute over payment of the hotel bill. “The investigation has revealed that there was a dispute over payment of bill between Manish and the three accused in the hotel. The trio later attacked Manish outside the hostel killing him in the process,” he said.

According to police, all the three accused along with the deceased Manish had gone to the hotel after visiting the Laxmisagar area on October 9 (Saturday night). Later, they attacked Manish following a dispute over hotel bill payment. The accused had later dumped Manish’s body in a pond in the vicinity with an intention to destroy evidence.

“With a motive to destroy the evidence, the accused disposed Manish’s body in the pond. The mobile phone of Manish is yet to be recovered. As there were no external injury marks on the body, as revealed by the postmortem report, it is suspected that Manish died during the scuffle with his friends,” Dash added.