The body of a 72-year-old advocate from Ara town in the Bhojpur district of Bihar, who had gone missing on Wednesday, has been found stuffed in a sack and dumped in a drain by the side of Patna-Buxar road, police said on Saturday.
The victim, Hari Ji Gupta, also owned several jewellery shops in Ara and the state capital Patna, said police.
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The police have arrested one Ritesh Kumar in connection with the murder, Anil Kumar Singh, station house officer (SHO) of Ara town police station said.
According to the police, a complaint lodged a day after Gupta went missing, his family expressed concern that he could have been abducted because of an ongoing rent dispute he had with the tenants of shops he owned in Ara.
An FIR (first information report) in the case has been launched and the police have named five persons, including Ritesh Kumar, police said.
Rakesh Kumar Mishra, president of the Ara Bar Association, blamed police inaction and demanded the suspension of senior police officers.
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Union minister and Lok Sabha MP from Ara, R K Singh, who visited the family earlier on Saturday, said incidents of crime had spiked ever since Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar quit the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and joined hands with Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) in August this year.
“It is reflected every day. ‘Jungle raj ’ will return to the state if it is not controlled. Whenever the crime graph shoots, the business community is targeted for extortion money,” Singh said.
Leader of opposition in the state assembly Vijay Kumar Sinha, Ara MLA and former agriculture minister Amrendra Pratap Singh are also scheduled to visit the family.
