Gurugram Police has ordered departmental proceedings against a sub-inspector and the station house officer (SHO) of Badshahpur police station after an internal inquiry found prima facie lapses in the handling of the unidentified body of Delhi-based realty professional Yuvraj Singh Manchanda, senior police officials aware of the matter said on Tuesday.
The body was subsequently cremated as unclaimed, denying Manchanda’s family the opportunity to perform his last rites. Details of the recovery were uploaded on the ZIPNET portal on the night of September 16 — the same day Manchanda’s family approached Badshahpur police station after learning from Delhi Police that he had been murdered and his body dumped in the area. On September 22, the Supreme Court sought responses from Haryana and Delhi police authorities over the matter and asked: “We want to know from Haryana why the information of the missing person was not put out on the portal. Manchanda, a resident of Sarita Vihar, left Lajpat Nagar market for Gurugram on the evening of September 6 after asking his two sisters to return home in a cab. His family filed a missing-person complaint on September 11. By September 16, Delhi Police had detained Manchanda’s former colleague Anya Vats and her partner Saiyam Sachdeva from Uttarakhand who confessed to murdering him.
Officials said the lapses included a delay in uploading details of the unidentified body and failure to relay information about its recovery to police control rooms in neighbouring districts and Delhi, which delayed its identification. Departmental proceedings have been ordered against the sub-inspector and inspector Rajesh Bagri, SHO of Badshahpur police station, officials who asked not to be identified said. A senior Gurugram Police officer said the sub-inspector posted at the police control room had alerted police stations across Gurugram about the recovery of the body, but the information was not circulated to police control rooms in neighbouring Haryana districts or Delhi. The unidentified body was recovered on the morning of September 10 and, after an autopsy, was cremated with all its belongings as an “unclaimed body” on September 14. Meanwhile, police officials aware of the matter said the Badshahpur team was trying to retrieve CCTV footage of the cremation, which may be required before a Delhi court and could be shown to Manchanda’s family.
