Ten days after highly decomposed body of British national Roddick Andrew Raymond was found dumped in Bhogal area of South east Delhi, the Delhi Police on Wednesday claimed to have made a breakthrough after two shopkeepers who had sold the plastic sack and the nylon cord used in disposing of the body were identified.
During the interrogation, the shopkeepers told the sleuths the plastic sack and the nylon cord were bought on April 26 suggesting that Roddick was killed the day he arrived in the city. The murderers were from the walled city area only who hid the body of Roddick for over three days and then threw the body in Bhogal area on April 28 last. The investigation is now veering around the theory that Roddick was murdered somewhere in Paharganj area and his body was dumped in Bhogal by the killers. Recovery of the body from Bhogal led the South east district police to do a door-to-door search in Bhogal and its adjoining areas and it also gave ample time to those behind the murder to escape the police dragnet.
Sources said that the two shopkeepers provided some information about the suspects but that has not yielded much. The absence of CCTV cameras in and around the two shops had confounded the sleuths. Several police teams have been put on the job to question hotel employees, touts and history-sheeters to arrest the killers of Roddick.
The two touts Umesh and Manmohan who took Roddick to lasvkush hotel in Chunamandi in Pahargang had told the investigators that they helped him in getting a room in the hotel. Roddick had left the hotel room on morning of April 25 last. He was last seen around 4.30 pm with a man on the same day. The man was identified and he was interrogated at length but nothing came out of it. It has been revealed that Roddick’s purse and hotel room key were also missing. Initial investigations had pointed towards the involvement of the drug peddlers. However, the probe could not make satisfactory headway, the sources added.