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The Delhi Police has issued a lookout circular against the father of West Delhi resident Gurpreet Singh, the accused in the murder of Swiss national Nina Berger whose decomposing body was found dumped near a school last month, The Indian Express has learnt.
According to police sources, before Gurpreet allegedly murdered 36-year-old Berger, his father Arjun Singh travelled to Switzerland to threaten her family over a monetary dispute involving Rs 8 lakh. They said the father’s role came to the fore after investigators scanned around 2,500 messages Gurpreet and Berger had sent to each other on WhatsApp.
Investigators have also found that it was over this dispute that Gurpreet later killed Berger to death, and not over a spurned marriage proposal as he had earlier claimed to mislead the probe.
Meanwhile, the final findings of Berger’s post-mortem, conducted by a panel of three doctors from Deen Dayal Upadhyay hospital, have attributed her death to “asphyxia caused by constriction of the neck… by an iron chain” and “assisted by masking of the face… by a polythene bag”. Berger’s body had around nine wounds, an officer said citing the report.
Berger’s body — with burn marks and chained limbs — was outside a school in West Janakpuri on October 20.
According to sources, Gurpreet, a Janakpuri resident who runs a gemstones business along with his father, had lured Berger to Delhi on the pretext of a “ritual” after promising to help her attain “mental peace” through occult rituals and gemology.
They said that towards the end of October, investigators finally managed to crack the password of Berger’s phone, allowing them access to its contents. These messages, the sources said, helped the police find out that the motive of the murder was the monetary dispute as he was constantly asking her to pay him around Rs 8.3 lakh.
In one of the messages, a source said, Berger requested Gurpreet to call his father Arjun and ask him to leave her house in Switzerland after she had come to know that Arjun had threatened her parents to pay up.
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Citing another conversation, a source said Berger had told Gurpreet that “she is not happy in her life”. “In September, he asked her to come to India to perform a worship ritual and gave reference to a hotel, situated in Tilak Nagar to stay. She came on October 11 and stayed in the same hotel in Tilak Nagar. She had initially booked her returning ticket for October 18, but later changed it to October 22,” the source said.
“During her stay in Delhi, she visited a nearby bank where she made a reference to the hotel manager and requested to withdraw her money. But she was not allowed due to technical reasons as her bank account was in Switzerland.
She even visited nearby ATMs – day before the incident and also on the day of incident with Gurpreet. Police have found the CCTV footage of ATMs,” an official said.
© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
First published on: 12-11-2023 at 01:55 IST
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