In order to gain password of the crypto currency- Bitcoin colleagues of deceased Abdul Shakur tortured him to death. Dehradun police have arrested five accused while five others are still absconding. Police have also recovered the tape that was used to close victim’s mouth, blood stained clothes, a knife and a screw driver that were used to torture him.

The accused arrested have been identified as Faris Mamnun, Arvind C, Ansif, Sufel Mukhtar and Aftab Mohammed while the absconding accused are Ashik, Arshad, Rihab, Munif and Yasin. All of them are natives of Kerala. Accused Yasin is a student of first year in a private institute of technology in Dehradun. He is the one who arranged for them to rent a room at Manduwala, where they used to torture Abdul.

Dehradun Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Arun Mohan Joshi said, “The police initially had to face some difficulties in identifying the deceased. We first tracked the auto in which the accused escaped after leaving the deceased and a car at the hospital. The auto owner told us that the accused first wanted to go to Manduwala but when they reached Ballupur Chowk they changed their mind and asked auto driver to take them to Dehradun railway station. The auto driver incorrectly identified a group of students as accused. Later the deceased was identified using the social media and inputs from the hospital staff. Despite all the confusion we were able to arrest five accused and to arrest other accused also our teams are working.”

He added, “We received information at about 11:30 PM that some men brought a man dead in a car to a hospital after which they left and ran away. The deceased also had several bruises which gave the appearance that he had been tortured.”

According to the information provided by the police, the accused during interrogation told the police that the deceased Abdul Shakur took nearly Rs 485 crore from several investors in Kerala in order to invest in crypto currency-Bitcoin. Shakur had a core team of four members Ashik, Arshad, Rihab and Shahib, of whom Ashik was closest to Shakur. Ashik also had five agents in his team Aftab, Ansif, Faris, Suhail and Arvind. Shakur used to collect the entire invested amount.

Some months ago, Shakur suffered major loss in Bitcoin, after which he left Kerala with four of his core team members. Shakur had told Ashik that his Bitcoin account has been hacked and he is now planning to launch his own crypto-currency, through which after earning profit he will return the money of all the investors. However, Ashik suspected that Shakur was lying and still had Bitcoins worth crores of rupees. So he made a plan with his five agents to gain the password Bitcoins account from Shakur for which they started searching for a secluded place.

Shakur had two companies in his name one of Bitcjax.btc and another was btc.bitshakur. He was also planning to launch his own company Cryptomass through which he planned to launch his own crypto currency.

Shakur and Ashik’s mutual friend Yasin was studying in a private college in Dehradun. Ashik involved Yasin in the plan and asked him to find a place to tackle Shakur. According to the plan, on August 12 midnight Ashik came to Dehradun with Shakur and soon Shahib, Arshad and Munif also came to Dehradun. Till now these three had no idea about Ashik’s plan.

Yasin found a room at Suddhowala Premnagar, in which they all entred on August 20. Ashik planned that if the remaining three members won’t cooperate they will he will treat them as hostages also. However, all three of them were in support of the plan. Then they all started torturing Shakur for the password of Bitcoin account. He died due to excessive torture but even after that they thought of reviving him somehow as it was a matter involving a huge amount of money. So they first took him to a private hospital at Ballupur Chowk and then to the hospital at Mussoorie Road, but at both places doctors declared him dead. Hearing this they ran away afterwards.

They initially tried to run away from Dehradun railway station, but after seeing police searching everywhere they hid in darkness at the railway station. Soon after the sunrise on Thursday they then went to ISBT from where they took a bus going towards Delhi via Saharanpur. The police caught them in Saharanpur.