MEDAK: Police on Tuesday, solved the mystery behind the suspected death of a Telangana Secretariat employee within eight days of the incident, and identified that it was not his body that was burnt, but that it was his driver’s body found in his car ... and all this was staged to claim insurance money for clearing his debts.

It may be recollected that the P Dharma Nayak (48) of Bheemla Thanda who was working as a senior assistant section officer in the Secretariat was found charred to death in his car on the outskirts of Venkatapuram village in Tekmal Mandal on January 9. Since a petrol can was found close to the spot, and based on circumstantial evidence at the accident site, led the police suspected that it was not an accident and the Tekmal Police had taken the case as a challenge.

His wife Neela had filed a complaint and based on that they started an investigation. The couple has three children. The body was taken to the hospital for postmortem and in the further course of investigation, the police started monitoring calls received by the family members. They traced Dharma’s phone signals and realized that he was still alive. What was more shocking was that he was traced to Goa where he was hiding and that Dharma was in constant touch with his wife and was guiding her about how to procure the death certificate.

He was brought back to Hyderabad and upon further prodding by the police, he spilled the beans and said that he had allegedly conspired and killed the driver and faked it as his own. Dharma revealed that he had done it to claim his own insurance money which was around Rs 6 Crores and pay off debts that he accumulated through betting over a period of time. It was reported that he had more than one crore Rupees in debt as per police investigation. The police are also questioning his wife and other family members who were involved in this conspiracy.

Call detail records, post-mortem reports, and DNA reports were also being taken into consideration and the police are slated to conduct a press meeting on Tuesday and present the accused to the media and explain the details of the case.

Also Read: Telangana Secretariat Employee Found Burnt To Death In Car At Medak