This couple never expected their visit to their doctor in the summer of 2006 to take such an unexpected turn. After waiting outside for half an hour, they peeked into her office to find her dead on the floor. It was May 13.The doctor, Hemlata Gupta, lived alone in her MIG flat in Block I of central Delhi’s Prasad Nagar after the death of her father and sister. Unmarried, she barely socialised. She sometimes attended to her long-standing patients at home.The previous day, Gupta had left home briefly to go to a store nearby to buy two cold drink bottles. That may afternoon, when the couple arrived for medical advice, they found her with her hands tied, mouth taped and her throat slit.This was no ordinary murderGupta was a former director and head of medicine at Lady Hardinge Medical College and had been honoured with the Padma Bhushan in 1998 for her contribution to medical science. Police were directed to give the case top priority.At first, the cops probed it as a robbery because the house looked partially ransacked. Two suitcases were found opened and their contents scattered. However, many valuable items, among them the gold bangles she had on, were found intact. When inquiries revealed that besides a flat in Prasad Nagar, Gupta also had a house in Vasant Kunj that remained mostly locked, property became the top line of the investigation because she had not left behind a will.What could be the motive behind the murderRevenge could have been a motive except that the injuries inflicted on her were not indicative of someone trying to settle scores and cause her pain. “The gagging and bound hands suggested that she had resisted and fought with the intruders. The crime scene indicated that the killers were looking for something specific — perhaps documents,” said a retired investigator who probed the case at the time. After weeks of probing, during which over 50 people were questioned, the cops narrowed down the suspects to a few. “Apart from a few distant relatives, the focus was on a TV mechanic, two property dealers, a servant of another doctor familiar with Gupta and a marriage bureau executive,” recalled an officer. The mechanic had recently repaired Gupta’s TV set while a random, unsolicited matrimony advertisement in a newspaper seeking Gupta’s alliance turned the lens on the marriage bureau employee. Some of the suspects were subjected to narco analysis tests, but there was no breakthrough. There was some hope the cold case would be resolved six years later. In August 2012, some people entered Gupta’s Vasant Kunj flat claiming she had sold it to them. The flat had been locked since she purchased it on January 28, 1991. The RWA promptly informed the cops and a man and woman were detained when they were getting the house cleaned. It eventually turned out that the couple had forged the power of attorney and sold the flat to another person. Police dug deeper but couldn’t prove the pair’s involvement beyond the forgery. Seventeen years later, why the doctor was murdered remains a mystery.
Source: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/unsolved-doc-murder-a-bitter-pill/articleshow/100234115.cms