NAGPUR: A ‘goodwill’ gesture on the roadside turned murderous. Three engineering students who initially offered to help a drunk driver allegedly killed him hours later and robbed him of his red Alto car and mobile phone. Three people found 44-year-old parts supplier Suchit Bhojapure slumped over the steering wheel of his car on a flyover in Wardhaman Nagar in eastern Nagpur district on Thursday night, police said on Saturday. They offered to park his vehicle safely.Bhojpur was allegedly intoxicated and asked three people – Aryan Shende, 22, Rishabh Kamble, 20, and Anuj Ramesh, 19 – to drive him. The initial aid extended to longer journeys – first to Bhiwapur, a town southeast of Nagpur, and then to his home near Wadi Babatri Murti Nagar on the city’s western outskirts.A phone call to his wife changed the course of the night, police said. She first asked them to take him home, then reacted angrily when told they had arrived at a locked house, asking why they had brought her “alcoholic husband.” Investigators said the exchange led students to believe the man was “unloved.”Greed took over. The trio allegedly decided to kill Bhojapur and keep his car and planned to change the number plate and color, police said. They allegedly drove to a wasteland near the crematorium on Khadgaon Road in Wadi, dragged him out and crushed his skull with stones. His body was stripped naked and dumped in bushes to prevent identification. Police said the students fled with a car and two expensive cellphones.Bhojapur’s father Upasrao has filed a missing complaint. The body was discovered Friday morning. A Crime Branch team headed by senior inspector Dnyaneshwar Bhedodkar and led by senior police officers Vasant Pardeshi, Rahul Maknikar and Abhijit Patil cracked the case within 12 hours. CCTV footage, technical surveillance and call records all pointed to Aryan contacting Bhojapur’s wife. Aryan allegedly confessed when he was picked up from a college campus in Nandanvan, east Nagpur. Bloodstains on the shoes undermined initial denials, police said. Others were quickly rounded up.All three were charged with murder and remanded in police custody.
