Noida Police have arrested seven contractual staffers deputed at Kalindi Kunj toll plaza for allegedly killing a commercial truck driver after he failed to pay Rs 14,000 demanded by them.
The accused have been identified as Manroop, Dharmpal, Amit Kumar, Chetan Prakash, Mohammad Sirajuddin, Manoj and Krishna Kumar.
The incident occurred on Friday when the 30-year-old canter truck driver, Vimal Kumar Tiwari, was on his way from Sector 59 in Noida to Ghitorni in Delhi, he was attacked by the seven accused at the toll plaza. Police said that after killing the man, the accused dumped his body near a drain.
The toll plaza is under the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD). According to a senior police official, the seven accused were not MCD appointed staffers but were engaged by a private contractor handling operations at the toll plaza.
“The truck driver had paid a tax of Rs 1,400 at the toll tax booth for passage, as per rules. But after he passed the booth, his vehicle was chased and stopped. The toll booth staffers asked him to pay a fine of Rs 14,000 and issued a fake ‘challan,” said Vaibhav Krishna, Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP), Gautam Buddh Nagar.
“When Tiwari resisted and called up his boss to inform him about the extortion bid at the toll plaza, he was attacked by the seven staffers who hit him with their hands and sticks before dumping him near a drain on the Noida side, some 100 metres from the toll plaza, thinking he was dead,” said the SSP.
“Later when informed about the incident, Tiwari’s brother along with the police took the victim to a hospital where he was declared dead,” said the SSP adding that a case was registered under sections 147 (rioting), 149 (unlawful assembly guilty of offence committed in prosecution of common object), 384 (extortion), 302 (murder) of Indian Penal Code (IPC) at the Sector 39 police station of Noida and the probe taken up which led to the arrest of these toll plaza staffers.
“During interrogation, the accused told the police that they were doing this (extorting money from commercial vehicles through illegal fines) on the instructions of the toll plaza manager, who is absconding,” the SSP said.