New Delhi: Olympic medalist hockey player Birender Lakra is accused of involvement in the murder of his childhood friend, Anand Toppo by the father of the deceased.
Lakra’s friend was found dead inside his flat in Bhubaneswar in February this year and the father of the deceased, bandhan toppohas accused the state police of shielding the hockey player as he is working as a DSP. Bandhan said he has been struggling to file an FIR for the past four months, but the state police did not help him, forcing him to make his allegations public.
The 32-year-old Lakra was part of India’s bronze medal winning team at the Tokyo Games and also led the national team in the Asia Cup, where the team won a bronze medal.
“We and Birendra were next door neighbors, so naturally Anand was his childhood friend. On 28 February, we got a call from Birender that Anand is unconscious and he is taking him to the hospital. Later he told us that Anand is no more.
“We asked him what had happened but he asked us to come to Bhubaneswar. We reached there the next day and were taken to the local police station where the officer informed that Anand had committed suicide. But there was no suicide note.
“After much persistence we were shown the body of Anand and at first glance I saw the hand prints on his neck. But the postmortem report said it was a suicide,” said Bandhan.
Anand was reportedly found dead in flat number 401 of Ayush Radium in Infocity, Patiya, which belongs to Lakra, while reports claimed that only Lakra and a girl named Manjit Tete were present in the flat at that time, the victim His father begged to be separated. Repeated calls to Lakra did not get any response.
FacebookTwitterinstagramKu APPyoutube