New Delhi: Rakesh Khanna, a 60-year-old man, believed that the money he had got from a real estate deal would secure his twilight years. It instead snuffed out his life. A relative got wind of it and hatched a plot to rob him.What looked like a murder-and-robbery plot soon turned out to be one of greed and betrayal with his wife’s niece, Simran Taneja, emerging as the mastermind behind his killing on Tuesday.Khanna, a resident of Rohini Sector 3, had recently sold a flat for Rs 80 lakh and converted the cash into gold. Armed with intimate knowledge of the family’s routine, Simran, a 23-year-old primary school teacher, allegedly hatched the plot to rob Khanna with her gym-owner boyfriend, Himanshu, trainer Chirag, 22, and Paras,19, a Class XII student previously involved in a case in Mukherjee Nagar.The group did a recce of the premises on Aug 30. On Tuesday afternoon, they struck. Knowing that the gold and money were kept in the house, Simran persuaded her aunt, Khanna’s wife, and other relatives to visit a local fair. This ensured that Khanna, a heart patient, would be alone at home.Simran had procured a duplicate key to the apartment’s central lock. She and Himanshu took positions outside the building around 7.30 pm to keep a watch while the two others entered the house.Chirag and Paras crept up the dimly lit stairs in the house. Khanna stood no chance against the sudden, overwhelming violence of the younger men. They smothered the 60-year-old man to death before he could raise an alarm.Leaving Khanna lifeless on the floor, the two men ransacked the house, tearing through cupboards and drawers in a desperate hunt for the gold. But Khanna had been cautious. Despite their efforts, the two managed to take away only about Rs 1.5 lakh in cash and some gold jewellery.Most of the gold remained safely concealed in the house with even Khanna’s family unsure where he had hidden it.When Khanna’s wife returned from the fair, she stepped into a ransacked home with her husband lying motionless on the floor. She dialled the cops at 8.15 pm to report what looked like a break-in. Khanna was rushed to Jaipur Golden Hospital where he was declared dead.Special CP (law and order) Devesh Chandra Shrivastava formed a 12-member team, led by joint commissioner Vijay Singh and DCP Shashank Jaiswal, to investigate the case. When cops and a forensic team got down to their job, the plot began to unravel quickly. The police stumbled upon breadcrumbs left behind by the suspects, and their mobile phone locations also gave them away. Studying CCTV footage from the area, the cops also noticed some suspicious movement a few days before the murder.Simran was found to be loitering near the house after the murder, trying to monitor the police response. When questioned about her movements on Aug 30, she gave conflicting answers, prompting the police to analyse her mobile call records and WhatsApp details.It took just three hours to crack the case. Three of the accused — Simran, Chirag and Paras — were caught. Himanshu is on the run.The police have also recovered Rs 70,000 of the stolen money and gold jewellery. A case was registered at South Rohini police station, and the accused produced in court and taken on remand.
