According to the police, on the day he allegedly murdered Sachin, a pharma company employee, Shailendra went about his day as usual, reporting to work at his Dahej-based company.

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Shailendra Chauhan, 33, allegedly murdered his friend, Sachin Chauhan, 35, in his rented apartment in Gujarat's Bharuch district on March 25. Over the next three days, Shailendra packed Sachin's dismembered body parts in different polythene bags, stored them in his flat, and disposed of them in parts to "escape being caught", the police said as they began piecing together the sequence of events that led to the crime.

According to the police, on the day he allegedly murdered Sachin, a pharma company employee, Shailendra went about his day as usual, reporting to work at his Dahej-based company. On his way back from work that evening, Shailendra allegedly purchased large polythene bags and women's clothing. He returned home and allegedly dismembered Sachin's body before cleaning up the blood stains in the house, the police said.

Over the next three days, from March 26 to March 28, Shailendra allegedly began disposing of Sachin's body parts, the police said. On the morning of March 26, he allegedly dressed up as a woman, rode Sachin's two-wheeler to the Bholav GIDC area, and dumped some of the body parts, including Sachin's severed head, in the open drainage line. Shailendra then allegedly withdrew cash from an ATM using Sachin's debit card and switched on Sachin's phone to message his family and mislead them, the police said.

On March 28, when Sachin's brother arrived in Bharuch, Shailendra allegedly joined him to 'look for' Sachin and also accompanied the family to the police station in Bharuch town to lodge a missing persons complaint. Later, he allegedly returned to dispose of the remaining body parts and headed to work, the police said.

On March 29, Shailendra allegedly escaped from Bharuch, citing the death of a relative in his village. A Bharuch Crime Branch team tracked Shailendra down and nabbed him from Jogipur in Uttar Pradesh's Bijnor district on Wednesday evening. Following his arrest, the Bharuch district police, which is investigating Sachin's murder, began reconstructing the timeline of the crime and the subsequent developments in the case.

According to the police, the two friends had frequently argued about paying the instalments of a loan that Sachin had borrowed from a private financial institution in his name for Shailendra. On the night of March 24, when the two met at Shailendra's apartment in Haridham society in Bharuch, they allegedly argued over the payments that Shailendra had been defaulting on, the police said. But the trigger, the police said, were a few photos of Shailendra's wife that were allegedly stored on Sachin's mobile phone.

"The two were friends from college days and had moved to Bharuch about 10 years ago to pursue better careers. They had financial transactions between them and often quarrelled over the payment of instalments of a loan that Shailendra had acquired through Sachin. They had also been arguing about the photos of Shailendra's wife on Sachin's phone. The accused wanted the victim to delete his wife's photos from his phone. On the night of March 24, they argued about the issues and went to sleep in the accused's apartment. The next morning, on March 25, they engaged in a bitter spat that led Shailendra to grab the kitchen knife and stab Sachin multiple times," a police release said.

According to the police, Shailendra also allegedly confessed to slitting Sachin's throat while stabbing him. "He went about his days as usual until March 29, even messaging Sachin's family to (lead them to) believe that the victim had left his house and wanted to break ties with his family for some reasons...That was a ploy to mislead them and the police," V R Bharwad, Police Inspector, told The Indian Express.

According to Bharwad, among the text messages allegedly sent by Shailendra to Sachin's brother using the victim's phone were ones that were intended to mislead the family into believing that Sachin had committed a murder. "In the text messages posing as Sachin, he narrated parts of the sequence of Sachin's murder to make the family believe that it was Sachin who had murdered an unknown man. He also sent a text message saying, 'I am with another woman and I need a divorce from my wife'. In a different message, he told Sachin's family, 'I owed money to the man (allegedly killed), and he spoke indecently about my wife, prompting me to kill him by smashing a glass bottle on his head'," Bharwad said.

Sachin's brother, however, was aware that it was Shailendra who owed Sachin money and suspected foul play, Bharwad added.

The Bharuch C Division police will produce Shailendra before a magistrate on Thursday to seek his custody in the case.
Sachin's head was found inside an open drain in Bholav GIDC on March 29. The following day, parts of his body from the waist to knee, as well as his right arm, were recovered. The accused allegedly cut off a part of the right arm where the victim had an English cursive tattoo of his name to prevent identification.

On Monday, the police recovered the left hand, and on Tuesday, his torso was recovered from a bag in a drainage line in another part of the town.