Killed 9 to Hide 1 Murder: Case of 9 Migrants Found Dead in Warangal’s Open Well, Solved!

The Telangana police on Monday reported to have solved the mystery behind the death of 9 migrant workers who were found in an open well in Warangal. The dead bodies were recovered last Friday and the investigation has now revealed that a fellow migrant worker killed all nine of them.

The accused is identified as Sanjay Kumar Yadav (24) who is from Bihar. He has allegedly murdered all nine of them in order to cover up another murder that he had committed.

The deceased were Md Maqsood (55), his wife Nisha (48), sons Shahabad Alam (21) and Sohail Alam (18), daughter Bushra (20) and her three years old son Shoaib (all from the same family who had migrated from West Bengal), Sriram (21) and Shyam (22) from Bihar, besides Shakil (30) from Tripura. All the above mentioned adults worked in a manufacturing unit and stayed in the company premises.

They continued to stay in the premises after the lockdown. The police had initially suspected it to have been a mass suicide, due to financial constraints. However, after the police had enquired the landlord and investigated the premises where they resided, they were suspicious.

“After going through the evidence available at the spot, examining the footage from the closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras and post-mortem report, we came to the conclusion that it was a cold-blooded murder by Sanjay Kumar Yadav, who came from Bihar six years ago and was working in the same factory,” Police Commissioner Ravinder said.

Ravinder revealed that Yadav had indulged in an illicit relationship with Rafiqa (37), a divorcee sister-in-law of Maqsood. She had returned from West Bengal to see her brother and also stayed with them until the first week of March. “Rafiqa, along with her three children, started living with Yadav separately. But she later realised that Yadav was also trapping her teenaged daughter. Unable to bear it, she threatened to expose him,” Ravinder added.

Yadav had conspired to kill her and hence left with her to Bengal after promising to marry her on March 6. While travelling he made her drink buttermilk with sedatives and strangulated her, following which he discarded her body from the train at Nidubrolu, West Godavari district.

He returned to Warangal after which he lied to Maqsood saying that Rafiqa decided to stay in West Bengal with a family for a while.

However, Maqsood questioned him recently after the family informed him that his sister had not returned home. He began questioning Yadav and threatened to file a complaint with the police. Frightened by the threat, Yadav decided to kill the entire family and the other residents who knew the situation.

Hence, he attended Maqsood’s son’s birthday celebration, where he added sleeping pills to the food.

“After ensuring that all of them were unconscious, Yadav dragged all the nine to the well one after the other and threw them into it between 12.30 am to 5 am on Thursday,” Ravinder said. He added that Yadav admitted to committing the crime as well.