The bodies of two businessman brothers with bullet wounds were recovered on Thursday noon from the chamber of the franchise head of a television news channel at posh Ashok Nagar here in one of the most sensational double murders in the capital recently.

The murders are likely to have taken place on Wednesday evening. Police say the local channel head of Sadhna News, Lokesh Choudhary, who owed victims Hemant and Mahendra Agrawal Rs 5 lakh, is missing.

Hemant, 38, and Mahendra, 40, who ran a courier service, Pawan Air Cargo, had apparently gone to the news channel office in a scooter on Wednesday to give Choudhary a reminder about the loan, a police source said. Hemant and Mahendra, who stayed with their families together in one Shivaji Apartment flat at Mukti Sharan Lane in Lalpur, had been traceless from Wednesday evening. When they did not return home, family friends registered a missing case with Lalpur police at 10.30pm.

Their respective wives’ numerous phone calls and texts went unanswered on Wednesday. However, the brothers’ phones continued to work. Tracing the phone location helped the police track the bodies to Choudhary’s chamber in Ashok Nagar.

The scooter found on the premises. Picture by Prashant Mitra

City SP Sujata Veenapani said primary investigation pointed to a money angle and Choudhary’s involvement in the double murder.

“We have come to know Choudhary had taken Rs 5 lakh as loan from the brothers and was giving one date after another for repayment. Choudhary is on the run. We are trying to arrest him,” she said.

She said both the brothers were shot at least twice, once on the head and on the chest, but post-mortem would reveal if there were more gunshots on the bodies.

Prodded for technical details of the killer weapon/weapons, she said, “Forensics is on the job. Let’s wait. But prima facie, the victims were shot from close range and three or four people seem to have been involved in the murder.”

The phones were found near the bodies, she said.

A police officer told this correspondent the sequence of events leading to the sensational discovery of the bodies.

Around 1.30am on Thursday, the phone locations of the brothers had revealed Choudhary’s office.

“We went there but did not find anything suspicious. We went again in the morning after talking to the wives of the brothers. They told us that their husbands had together gone to Choudhary’s office on a scooter to give the latter a reminder about their dues (the borrowed money),” the cop said. “Then, on the campus, we found the news channel offices closed from outside and a scooter covered with a cloth. We called up the brothers and heard rings from a room on the top floor of the double-storey building. We thought someone must have trussed them up there. But when we reached the balcony in front of Choudhary’s office and broke open the window of the office, we noticed the bodies of both the brothers lying in a pool of blood,” the policeman said.

A neighbour of the deceased Agrawal brothers said both had a “sober reputation as family men” in the locality. “Their parents and another brother reside somewhere in Dhanbad,” he said. “The family is originally from Dhanbad but these brothers have been staying in Ranchi since the past four years or so.”

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