PCO call led Noida police to RTI activist who faked his own death five years ago

Indian Express: Noida: Sunday, October 06, 2019

A PCO call, a t-shirt with a “Honda logo” and a tattoo were some of the few things that helped nail RTI activist Chandra Mohan Sharma (43), who had faked his own death in 2014 to live with his girlfriend, Preeti Nagar (30).

Last week, Sharma was sentenced to life imprisonment by a Gautam Budh Nagar district court while Preeti faces prison for up to six months. The lawyer representing Sharma plans to challenge the sentence.

The case dates back to May 2, 2014, when a call was received about a car found burning near Greater Noida’s Jaypee Greens. As the fire was brought under control, a body charred beyond recognition was found in the back seat. A tiny piece of cloth with the ‘Honda’ logo was recovered as a possible clue to the accused’s identity.

Soon after, an FIR was filed by Savita, wife of Chandra Mohan Sharma, that her husband, an RTI activist, had been killed over an alleged land dispute. Sharma, who worked with Honda at the time, had filed several RTIs over alleged illegal land occupation for a temple in Kasna, as per statements submitted in court. Police began looking for the accused named in the FIR filed by his wife.

A month later, Preeti’s family filed an FIR under IPC section 364 (kidnapping) at a Greater Noida police station, stating that she had been allegedly abducted. Three months on, no leads were found in either case, and the trail seemed to go cold.

Then, on August 9 this year, Preeti’s father Santram received an anonymous phone call claiming his daughter was in Tirupati.

“We travelled with Preeti’s father and another relative to Tirupati, but found that the number belonged to a PCO in Bengaluru. We located the phone booth to Hoskote; next to it was a jewellery shop with a CCTV. The PCO and shop owner recalled that the caller was wearing a ‘Honda uniform’,” Vinay Sharma, a Kasna police officer investigating the case, told the court. The caller had stood out since most callers at the PCO didn’t talk in Hindi.

Police found that the caller worked at Honda Motorcycle India Pvt Ltd and his name was Nitin Sharma. When police traced him, they noticed a tattoo on his hand which read ‘Chandramohan and Savita’.

This was the point police realised Nitin was, in fact, Chandra Mohan Sharma. Sharma then allegedly offered a bribe to the police officer and asked him to not reveal his true identity.

On further investigation, police found that Sharma had been having an affair with Preeti. The two had secretly married in an Arya Samaj Mandir and wanted “a new start”. On the day of the incident, Sharma and his brother-in-law strangled a homeless, mentally challenged man near Ansal Plaza and placed him in the car, which was set on fire. Soon after, Sharma fled to Bengaluru and assumed a new identity. He got fake documents and even got a job in Honda, the same company he had been working at earlier, police said.

But financial problems arose when Sharma and Preeti began living with each other in Bengaluru, which prompted him to make calls to her father about her location, hoping he would take her away.

His counsel, however, alleged that the case needs to be looked at again. “We are looking to challenge the case on technical grounds,” said Yogesh Solanki, Sharma’s lawyer.