Mehram murder case: Hair strands found on shovel match with those found from body

After Mehram’s body was discovered on November 7 last year, the police sent various samples for testing, including two samples of soil stained with blood, a lower jaw bone of the child which was found separately, grass stained with blood, and also a shoe and a piece of cloth containing strands of hair and stained with blood.

After Ganju was arrested on November 19, the police recovered the shovel used by him for digging a pit to bury the body. The shovel had strands of hair in it and was immediately sent for testing at the Forensic Science Laboratory, Mohali.

The police have submitted a list of 26 prosecution witnesses, including police officials, doctors, family members and neighbours of Mehram, and also attached an extra-judicial confession made by Ganju to a neighbour.

Killer was a childhood friend of Mehram’s mother
According to the police, Ganju told them after his arrest that being a neighbour of Mehram’s mother Harinder Kaur ‘Honey’, he had known her since their childhood. Ganju allegedly got a whiff of the fact that she had received Rs 15 lakh from his paternal family due to an ongoing dispute, and hatched the plan to kidnap the boy.

No trace of poison or chemical substance
After the victim’s autopsy, samples of his semi-decomposed intestinal mass, swabs from his leg and skull skin, anal and peri-anal swabs, and other visceral samples were sent for chemical examination to various government laboratories. The reports have ruled out poisoning or sexual assault. Initially, it was suspected that the body may have been partly burnt using a chemical substance. However, no petroleum product or acidic substance was found in the samples of soil, as per the reports.

Ganju confessed to neighbour out of fear
The police have stated that after abducting Mehram and taking him to Sector 69, Ganju got to know that Mehram’s family and neighbours had started searching for him and, therefore, killed him out of fear. Later, he made an extra-judicial confession to his neighbour Joginder Singh, who further informed the police. The police arrested him following a tip-off by a Phase 9 resident who saw him in Sector 69, and also recovered the scooter that Ganju used, which is registered in the name of a Chandigarh resident.