Noida: 4 College Students Choke Friend To Death During Party Brawl, Bury Him In A Field

Police in Uttar Pradesh’s Noida have arrested three college students for allegedly killing their friend in a brawl during a party and burying his body in a field in Amroha. The deceased, identified as Yash Mittal, was pursuing a bachelor’s degree in business administration at a university in Greater Noida before his tragic death.

Yash Mittal (20), the son of a businessman, went missing from his hostel on Monday.

The case reportedly came to light after the deceased youngster’s father Deepak Mittal approached police when he started getting ransom messages, demanding Rs 6 crore in return for his son’s release.

During the probe, police scanned the CCTV footage of Yash’s university campus and checked his call records.

In the security footage, Yash was last seen leaving the campus on Monday while speaking to someone over the phone. Later, as part of the probe, call data records were also checked, leading police to some suspects, including his friend Rachit Nagar who told the police about a party in Gajraula in Uttar Pradesh’s Amroha (about 100 km away), where Mittal was invited by his friends.

“During the probe, Rachit Nagar told police that he, Yash Mittal, Shivam Singh, Shubham Singh, Sushant Verma and Shubham Chaudhary, who lived in Gajraula (Amroha), are friends with each other since November 2023,” Deputy Commissioner of Police (Greater Noida) Saad Miya Khan said.

“On February 26, they had called Yash Mittal for the party in Gajraula. He went there during which an argument broke out between him and others after which he was killed and his body was buried 6 ft deep inside a farmland in Gajraula. We recovered the body from the farmland on Wednesday,” Khan said.

The argument broke out between the accused — all in their late 20s and financially weak — and Mittal, whose family is in the electronics business after he told them that they were “surviving and having parties on his money”, according to a police source privy to the probe.

On Wednesday evening, the police got to know that the accused were in Greater Noida’s Dadri area. During a combing operation, a gunfight broke out during which the accused suffered bullet injuries on their legs, and were later held, police said.

The fourth accused — Shubham Chaudhary — is at large and efforts are underway to arrest him.

As per the police, the accused sent ransom messages to Yash’s father to mislead the family.

“The accused told the police that they had killed Yash on February 27 but to mislead the police and his family, they sent ransom messages on February 28,” DCP Khan said.

The police said they have lodged two FIRs against the accused — first for murder, criminal conspiracy, and evidence destruction, and the second after the encounter for an attempt to murder and under the Arms Act. Further legal proceedings in the case are underway, the police added.