Gurugram: What was turning out to be yet another night shift for staffers at a sleepy petrol pump along the Delhi-Gurugram Expressway was interrupted in the wee hours of Monday when at around 3 am they saw a young man hobbling into their pump — soaked in blood and shouting for blood before collapsing.
The man, later identified as 21-year-old Naresh, had been stabbed multiple times at a CNG pump in Sector-31 — a few metres from where he collapsed and died. When the petrol pump staff immediately called the police after Naresh came to them, it was discovered that Naresh, a filler at the Sector-31 pump, along with two other employees at his pump was brutally murdered in the dead of the night.
When law enforcement officials reached Naresh's CNG pump station, they were shocked to find two more bodies lying in the manager's room, both now identified as Bhupendra (22) and Pushpendra, in his late 30s — all three killed from Uttar Pradesh.
Bhupendra was the cash operator at the pump and Pushpendra was the manager, police found, with officials adding that prima facie inquiries showed that the three petrol pump workers were brutally stabbed multiple times with a machete-like object between 2:30 am and 2:50 am.
Noting the brazen murder spree in the centre of Gurugram, senior officials, including Police Commissioner Kala Ramachandran reached the spot.
After ascertaining the identity of the victims, the Gurugram Police called their family members and began to investigate the matter.
While the initial assumption was that this was a robbery gone wrong, the police rejected this theory after finding that all valuables of the victims and the petrol pump were intact.
"We have registered the case and have begun our investigations. The cash of the petrol pump (Rs 10 lakh that was recovered from the safe) and valuables of the victims have not been stolen. We are trying to explore various scenarios in this case to get hold of the criminals who committed this heinous act," Virender Vij DCP (East), Gurugram.
However, the police have already run into their first hurdle after finding that the suspects had disconnected the wires to the CCTV cameras at the pump. Law enforcement officials are now trying to explore if this was a case of personal enmity.
"We belong from Aligarh. My brother Naresh was only 21 and this should not have happened to him. I got a call this morning from Gurugram Police saying that my brother had been attacked at the petrol pump. I first thought it was a joke but when I came here, I realised I had lost him forever," said Mahesh.