The Ahmedabad Crime Branch has solved a 14-year-old murder case by arresting a man accused of killing his friend and homosexual partner in 2010, police said on Saturday.
The Crime Branch arrested the accused, identified as Ramesh Desai, who is a resident of Vejalpur in Ahmedabad. Desai allegedly killed his friend Manish Gupta, stripped him, tied his limbs, filled his mouth with plaster solution, wrapped the body in a blanket and buried it under the platform of the kitchen in his room.
During interrogation, Ramesh told the police that he was in a homosexual relationship with Manish and that he killed his partner after a fight and fled.
Desai was evading the police for 14 years and was eventually tracked down after the Crime Branch, who is revisiting unsolved cases in Ahmedabad, came across this case.
The police got intelligence that the suspect was planning to go to Rajasthan from Mumbai via Ahmedabad. Acting on the tip-off, the police arrested Ramesh.
An FIR regarding Manish’s murder was lodged by one of his friends, Hirasingh, at Vejalpur police station in Ahmedabad on June 29, 2010.
“When the suspect was taken into custody and questioned, he identified himself as Rajnarayan Gurjar, who lives in Bhilwara, Rajasthan. But when the police strictly questioned the accused as his demeanor was not Rajasthani but Gujarati, the accused confessed that he was indeed Ramesh Desai”, Ahmedabad Crime Branch DCP Ajit Rajiyan said.
According to police, at around 3 pm on June 26, 2010, Ramesh Desai and Manish Gupta were at their room. Ramesh told the police that Manish started touching him inappropriately and also bit him in the chest and private parts. “Ramesh said that he got injured and started bleeding. After this, a fight broke out between the two, in which Ramesh hit Manish on the head with a brick and the latter fell unconscious lying in a pool of blood”, DCP Rajiyan added.
Ramesh initially thought that Manish had died, so he buried him in the kitchen and went to work. Meanwhile, Harisingh, who lived with them at night, asked Ramesh about Manish when he did not see him in the room. Ramesh told Harisingh that Manish had gone to Mahesana for some work.
The next day, when a stream of blood sneaked through the kitchen platform, Harisingh’s asked Ramesh about it who told him that it was the spit of tobacco that he used to chew, police said.
In an attempt to destroy evidence, Ramesh cleaned up the blood with water. The next day, Ramesh and Harisingh went to work. When Ramesh returned to his room, he sensed a foul smell emanating from Manish’s body. During that time, Harisingh had gone to the house of the room’s owner to pay him the rent. This was when Ramesh got scared of getting caught and fled from the spot on a two-wheeler.
To evade arrest, Ramesh reached Surendranagar near Ahmedabad, stayed in Dudhrej for a day, sold off his mobile phone, abandoned the two-wheeler he was driving and reached his village, Mandla, as per a police report.
When he learnt that the police had reached his village in search of him, he fled to Bhilwara in Rajasthan. There, he stayed for eight years, got a fake Aadhaar card, and a Permanent Account Number (PAN) to his name as Rajnarayan Gurjar.
Ramesh stayed in Bhilwara for eight years till 2018. Thereafter, he moved to Mumbai and also got married there in 2021, the police further added.
Meanwhile, the police are interrogating Ramesh and are further investigating the case.