Mathura was rocked by a sensational murder of a priest.
His body was found lying in a pool of blood on the sofa of his room at Satguru Siddha Ashram on Nandgaon road under Kosikalan police station area, on Tuesday evening.
Both legs of the victim were tied together and the head was smashed with a brick.
The murder came to light when the villagers went to the ashram on Tuesday evening to meet the priest. They immediately informed the police after finding the priest brutally murdered.
Later local police along with senior officers and a team of forensic experts visited the spot and carried out investigation.
Senior Superintendent of Police Shailesh Pandey, who also reached the spot, formed four teams to work out the case and nab the killers.
Reports said that saint Haridas, who hails from Delhi, came to Mathura 20 years ago and since then he was living in Satguru Siddha Ashram. He used to live alone in the ashram and was a priest in the temple. The local residents used to visit the ashram to meet Haridas and get their problems resolved. Sometimes, visitors were also allowed to stay in the ashram during the night.
The local residents claimed that Haridas used to visit the houses of local residents to have lunch but on Tuesday, when he did not came out till the evening and no one saw him in the temple, the residents visited the ashram to enquire about his health and were shocked to see his body lying in a pool of blood.
The local police claimed that during the probe it came to light that Haridas had come to Mathura from Delhi 20 years ago and one Ashok Pandit, a local resident, had donated about 300 bighas of land to him on which had built the Siddha Ashram besides temples of Lord Hanuman and Lord Shiva. Haridas was the priest of both the temples.
The police are probing whether the murder is related to the land of the ashram as it is yet to be confirmed whether Pandit had donated the land or Haridas had grabbed it after opening an ashram.
Further investigations are on.
Meanwhile, the producer-director of Bhojpuri film ‘Do dil bandhe ek dori se’ died in suspicious circumstances on Wednesday. His body was found lying in a hotel room in Robertsganj town of Sonbhadra.
Police broke open the door of the room and took the body into custody and informed the family about the director’s death. He was staying in the hotel room for the last 12 days in connection with the shooting of the film. Cigarette packets and medicines were recovered from the room.
Reports said that Subhash Chandra Tiwari (60) of Thane in Maharashtra, was producing Bhojpuri film ‘Do dil bandhe ek dori se’. The shooting of the film was going on in different areas of Sonbhadra district. The film unit was staying in different hotels since May 12 while Tiwari along with some artistes was staying in a hotel on the Varanasi-Shaktinagar road.
According to the members of the film unit, Subhash Chandra Tiwari was upset since Tuesday evening. He was also taken to a doctor. After reaching the hotel, he paid the film’s hero Prem Singh and heroine Kajal Yadav and sent them to Varanasi airport in a car to go to Mumbai. He went to sleep in his room at around two o'clock in the night.
When he did not come out of the room till late Wednesday morning, fellow artistes came to wake him up. When they got no response, they raised an alarm following which the hotel management called the police and the door was broken open only to find the body of Tiwari lying on the bed.
Manoj Singh, in-charge of Robertsganj police station, claimed that a case was registered and they were waiting for the autopsy report before moving ahead with the investigation.
