RAIPUR: A murder probe in Chhattisgarh’s Jashpur district took a bizarre turn over the weekend when the supposed “victim” – a man whose charred body had been identified and buried 61 days earlier – walked into a local police station to declare he had no idea his family had given him up for dead when he was away working in Jharkhand.While Simit Khakha of Sitonga village was in Giridih working as a daily-wage labourer, four arrested acquaintances back home awaited trial for his murder.The case against the quartet was apparently based on the discovery of a charred body in a forest last Oct along with allegedly unverified eyewitness accounts of how the crime occurred. Simit’s family, who had reported him missing when he didn’t return to Sitonga with the group he had accompanied to Jharkhand in search of work, was told that the suspects killed him during a liquor-fuelled brawl on October 17. Investigators said the suspects had “confessed” to the murder. Simit’s sudden reappearance turned the case on his head. SSP S M Singh said a SIT has been set up to establish the identity of the murder victim and would also probe alleged procedural violations.
