School playground turns graveyard

Hunt for riches leads to buried body; police suspect murder by school owner who committed suicide recently

It was a treasure hunt gone terribly awry. Pankaj Bhardwaj, the owner of SV Public School at Ranhola village in southwest Delhi had committed suicide on March 22. On Sunday, his domestic help informed Bhardwaj's mother that the deceased had asked her to dig a three to four feet deep pit in the school's playground two days before his death. Apparently he wanted to bury some medicines.


Police dug up a portion of the playground using heavy-duty equipment,
to recover a body. Pic/rajeev Tyagi

"Bhardwaj's family members thought that some treasure might have been buried by him and they were going to dig up the pit when the news reached the police" said a senior police officer.
Not to be left behind in this grand excavation, the police arrived in the evening armed with heavy-duty drilling and digging machines. Work began in right earnest.

But the discovery that was made was rather unexpected.

"They dug up the ground and recovered a decomposed body. The victim has been identified as Dinesh, a resident of Raj Nagar. We suspect that Bhardwaj might have murdered him but we are probing the case from all possible angles before reaching to any conclusion. We have sent the body of the deceased for post-mortem in Deen Dayal Upadhayay Hospital and are awaiting his autopsy report to ascertain the cause of Dinesh's death," the officer said.

25- year-old Dinesh who was a resident of Raj Nagar near Palam had gone missing on March 20. His family had registered a missing complaint in this regard at the local police station.

"Nirmala told us that the pit was open on March 20 but when she came to school the next day, it was filled up. From her statement, it seems that Dinesh was murdered either on March 20 or 21.
We are questioning some people in this regard but we will be able to comment on the reason for murder once the investigation is complete," the officer said.