5 arrested for poisoning man to death in Odisha's Jajpur

Jajpur, Feb 28 (PTI) At least five people have been arrested by police for allegedly poisoning a man to death in Odisha's Jajpur district, an officer said on Saturday.

Police arrested them after an autopsy report revealed that the 39-year-old deceased Santosh Malik was poisoned to death.

"Police arrested five people, including the younger brother of the deceased. All eight accused named in the FIR were on the run since the filing of the complaint," said Jajpur Town SDPO Prasant Kumar Majhi.

The five accused arrested have been identified as Prasant Malik, younger brother of the deceased, Purnachandra Malik, Gajendra Malik, Kailas Malik, Sanatan Malik and Prasant Kumar Malik, all of them belong to Arangabad-Anandpur village of Bari block, police said.

Prasant had allegedly physically assaulted his sister-in-law (wife of his elder brother Santosh Malik) over a property-related issue in the first week of October last year. Based on complaints of Santosh, Prasant was arrested by police and sent to jail.

After his release from jail, Prasant allegedly took assistance of some villagers to teach his elder brother a lesson. Accordingly, they hatched a conspiracy and called Santosh to an isolated place near their village in the plea of settling the issue amicably on October 18 night, police said.

Santosh was offered to consume liquor allegedly laced with poison on the same night. When Santosh returned home, he complained of stomach pain and started vomiting. He was immediately rushed to the Bari Community Health Centre, where he died on October 18.

On October 19, Bandana Malik, the wife of Prashant, filed a complaint with the local police that her husband was poisoned to death by her brother-in-law, Prasant Malik and seven others from her village.

Based on the complaint, police seized the body and sent it to the district headquarters hospital for a postmortem and started an investigation. The autopsy reports revealed that it was a murder. PTI COR AAM AAM RG