Lalitagiri: Police Friday arrested a man and produced him in court on the charge of killing his nephew over a property dispute and subsequently dumping the body in a farmland at Jhadeshwarpur under Mahanga police limits in Cuttack district.
The accused was identified as Babaji alias Achyutanand Pradhan, the uncle of the deceased, Prabhat Pradhan. Babaji was remanded in judicial custody after the court rejected his bail plea, police said.
According to police, a rift prevailed between Babaji and Prabhat over an ancestral land. Prabhat was also a small time criminal and was involved in many anti-social activities. He often threatened Babaji and his family members over the land dispute. He had earlier attempted to kill Babaji over the issue.
Fed up with his activities, Babaji hatched a plan to eliminate Prabhat. He attacked Prabhat while the latter was returning home in an inebriated state from a marriage function and hacked him to death with a sharp-edged weapon, leading to his death on the spot.
Subsequently, he took the body and dumped it in a farm before fleeing his daughter’s in-law house. Acting on a tip-off, police arrested him who later confessed to the crime, Salepur SDPO Pradyumna Kumar Jena and Mahanga IIC Subranshu Shekhar Parida revealed before media persons.