The Delhi police has told the Supreme Court that crucial evidence in connection with the murder of 31-year-old real estate professional Yuvraj Singh Manchanda was lost due to the delay by Haryana police in uploading the information about the unidentified dead body and its subsequent cremation without any intimation on the inter-state crime tracking network.
Delhi Police registered a report and uploaded his details, including his photograph, on the inter-state Zonal Integrated Police Network portal on the same day. The information was circulated to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), the Missing Persons Squad and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on the same day. The Gurugram police commissioner has separately responded to the court’s September 22 order, which will also be taken up on Monday. Manchanda, a resident of Sarita Vihar, went missing after leaving for Gurugram from Lajpat Nagar market on the evening of September 6. His family filed a missing complaint at the Lajpat Nagar police station on September 11 since the suspects had been kept sending messages from his phone as if he was alive. Responding to a September 22 order by a bench of justices Ahsanuddin Amanullah and R Mahadevan, the Delhi police commissioner said the efficacy of ZIPNet and CCTNS (Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems) in matching missing persons with unidentified dead bodies depends upon the contemporaneous uploading of both by every participating police unit, and upon a cross-search of these databases before an unidentified dead body is disposed of.
In an affidavit filed in a matter where the court is tracking nationwide directions on action against missing persons to effect their timely recovery, Delhi police commissioner Anurag Kumar said Delhi resident Manchanda was killed in Gurugram by his former colleague Anya Vatsa and her friend Sanyam Sachdeva. The Delhi police was able to link the body to their victim only after the arrest of the suspects who allegedly told investigators about the location where they had dumped the body. The Delhi police stated that since it came to know about the missing complaint, it acted with “promptitude” by registering a first information report (FIR) and placing the details on ZIPNet.
