KATHMANDU, JULY 4
An Indian national was found dead at least 36 hours after his murder inside his rented house at Sanepa in Lalitpur district this morning.
Satya Narayan Parik, 59, was found lying face down when police and neighbours recovered his body. He was covered in a pool of clotted blood. Police surmised that the murderer(s) might have hit the victim's head multiple times with a hammer that was lying nearby.
Parik had been living alone for the past few years in the same house where his wife had died a few years ago due to health complications, while his two daughters were also married from the same house, as per the police. The old building in Sanepa had only two rooms in the flat and he was using rooms on the second floor, said police.
Senior Superintendent of Police Kiran Bajracharya, chief of Metropolitan Police Range, Lalitpur, said Parik must have been murdered with the same hammer they had found at the crime scene. Preliminary investigations showed that the murderers barged into the room with the motive of robbery, but eventually killed Parik after he tried to stop them.
Police have suspected that the robbers used the same hammer with which they broke the window hinges to get inside the house to kill the victim.
"The culprits had broken the back window of the house to barge in and left the house from the same window after killing and robbing him," Bajracharya said, adding, "They have also vandalised cupboards, beds, piggy banks and drawers in the house and stole Parik's valuables and money."
Parik's murder came to light after a housemaid felt something suspicious was going inside the house as she could not enter the house on two consecutive occasions.
The housemaid used to visit Parik's apartment once or twice a day as needed. On Friday, when she bid goodbye to Parik, he had asked her not to come the next morning but only in the evening. As per the directions, the housemaid went to the house last evening but returned after Parik didn't open the door. She visited the house again this morning, but there was no response this time also.
She then gathered people in the neighbourhood after there was no response to her phone calls even though the doors were locked from inside.
Finally, they called police.
"Circumstantial evidence proves that Parik was murdered on Friday evening after the housemaid left the house," Bajracharya said.
Police have intensified the investigation. Digital forensic examination of his mobile phone and post-mortem of the body have already started. "We can further reveal about his death after the post-mortem report and other digital reports," Bajracharya said.
Police have also mobilised sniffer dogs at the crime scene and recorded statements from people he last talked to.
Parik was a cool-tempered man and was well-known in the community. He used to work as a sales manager at a local electronic materials supplying company.
Meanwhile, Parik's younger brother and his son have filed a FIR asking police to investigate the murder.
A version of this article appears in the print on July 5 2021, of The Himalayan Times.
