18 years on, house painter gets life term for murdering wealthy man living alone in Dehradun over property

DEHRADUN: The Dehradun district court on Monday sentenced a house painter, Mehmood Ali, 55, to life imprisonment for the murder of a wealthy house owner, Pushpendra Singh Duggal, in 2006. Additional district judge Mahesh Chandra Kaushiwa also sentenced Ali's accomplice, Naeem Rahat, 70, to seven years of rigorous imprisonment for criminal conspiracy and destruction of evidence.
Jaya Thakur, public prosecutor in the matter, said that Duggal had hired Ali, Rahat and their associate Qutub Uddin in Feb 2006 to paint his bungalow located in Dalanwala, an affluent neighbourhood of Dehradun.
He lived alone in the house while his estranged wife and their two daughters lived in Haryana's Yamuna Nagar. Duggal also owned properties in Dehradun's Curzon Road and Shimla and two apartments in Delhi.
"During the job, Ali and his aides became aware of Duggal's properties and that he had minimal interaction with his relatives. They then hatched a plan to murder him and seize the documents of his properties. They proceeded to execute the plan thereafter. However, Duggal's neighbours noted his disappearance after a few days and informed his Delhi-based niece, Manjeet Chawla, who filed a missing person's report on Feb 14, 2006," Thakur said.
The case took a turn when more than a year after Duggal's disappearance, Ali and his aides turned up in Jalandhar with an unclaimed body found near a railway track, and claimed that it was Duggal's. They also managed to obtain a fake death certificate from Jalandhar and thereafter filed a case for Duggal's property transfer in their name through a forged will.
Cops, while investigating Duggal's disappearance, came to know of the attempted property transfer and questioned Ali and his associates. The trio thereafter confessed to their crime. "Ali and Qutub Uddin killed Duggal inside the garage at his home, and after dark, they stuffed his body in a drum and transported it to Chandrabani on the outskirts of Dehradun, where they burned it."
Duggal's burnt body was subsequently recovered from a deserted area near Chandrabani shooting range and identified by the kada (bracelet) worn by him.
Uddin died in 2022 during the trial. The court also imposed a fine of Rs 28,000 on Ali and Rs 18,000 on Rahat.