2 bodies of one man found in Vadodara, family cremates both

In a bizarre incident, police in Vadodara have found a second body of a murdered man who had been cremated by his family on May 1.

As per reports, a businessman Suraj Shah (45) was murdered by his lawyer Vijay Ravji Rohit and two others. Shah owed Rohit Rs 4.6 lakh, which he had given to the former as a loan couple of months back.

Two persons -- Shrikan Suresh Pawar and Mehul Santosh Mane -- helped Rohit kill Shah on April 25. The three apparently killed Shah and threw his body in Narmada canal near Vitoj with a stone tied to his legs.

Sometime later, the police found a body floating in the canal. When asked to identify, Mane said the body was not of the killed businessman, but Shah's family claimed it to be his. Later, the police sent the body for autopsy and thereafter handed over to the family, who cremated it on May 1.

The twist in the story came when the police recovered another dead body from the same canal, this time from Halol. The police believe that the body found later is that of Shah and not the earlier one, unlike what the family claimed.

The possibility of the second body being that of Shah is also strengthened by the fact that the three accused had claimed that they had tied a stone to the legs of the deceased before throwing the body into the canal.

While the body recovered earlier did not have any stones tied to it, a stone was found tied to the second dead body's legs. Clothes on the body also matched with the ones Shah was seen wearing in the CCTV footage of the day he vanished.

The police also point out that while Shah was seen wearing a half-sleeve T-shirt in the CCTV footage, the dead body found earlier had a full-sleeve shirt on it.

"What can we say? There appears to be some kind of mix-up," Shruti Shah, wife of the deceased, told the media. "The first body resembled with him to a great extent."

The police have now launched an investigation to find out who the man was whose body was found first, even as the Shah family cremated the second body on Friday and also held a condolence meeting at their residence.

--IANS

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