The Bihar police cracked the murder case of Vikassheel Insan Party (VIP) chief and former minister Mukesh Sahni’s father Jitan Sahni and arrested the main accused late on Wednesday evening.
The police are making efforts to nab other people involved in the crime and said that the killing was over a dispute related to a loan.
Jitan was brutally stabbed to death in his house at Supaul Bazar in Darbhanga district during the early hours of Tuesday. He used to live alone. The incident sparked widespread condemnation of the chief minister Nitish Kumar-led NDA government over the deteriorating law and order in the state.
“We have arrested one Muhammad Kazim Ansari from Supaul Bazar area following our investigations. He has confessed to his involvement in Jitan Sahni’s murder and has provided various details with regard to it,” Darbhanga senior superintendent of police (SSP) Jagunatharaddi Jalaraddi said.
The SSP said that Ansari has a garment shop and he had taken a ₹1 lakh loan from Jitan in 2022 on an interest of four per cent per month. He took another loan of ₹ 50,000 in 2023. He had mortgaged a piece of land in lieu of the loan. The police found agreement papers in this regard.
“However, the total amount was continuously increasing and Ansari was unable to pay it. He asked Jitan to waive the four per cent per month interest and return the land documents. They had a fight over the issue around three or four days ago,” Jalaraddi said.
Ansari and his associates did a recce of Jitan’s house between 10.30pm and 11pm on the intervening night of July 15 and 16. We noticed them in the footage captured by CCTV cameras in the vicinity. They entered Jitan’s house from the backdoor around 1.30 am on Tuesday. The door was not locked and there was a power cut in the area. They woke him up and demanded the documents of the mortgaged land.
“Ansari became angry and attacked Jitan with a knife while his associates caught his limbs and pinned him down. The accused searched for the key of the small cupboard. However, they could not find it. They then threw the cupboard in the water nearby so that the papers would be destroyed and fled away,” Jalaraddi said.
