Bhopal: One arrested in RTI activist murder case, three detained

Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): The Bhopal police on Friday arrested one Ankit Yadav as the prime accused in the murder case of RTI activist Ranjeet Soni. The police also seized a country made pistol from his custody.

According to the information, the police also detained contractor Aish Kumar Choubey, Jaswant Raghuvanshi and Naresh Sharma have been detained by the police over some old dispute with Ranjeet Soni.

According to the police officers, the detained contractors had hired Ankit Yadav over ransom money to kill Ranjeet Soni.

During interogation, the contractors said that they had a money dispute with Ranjeet Soni. A case regarding the same had been registered in the course.

"We had to suffer huge loss in a tender because of Ranjeet and hence we planned to murder him and hired Ankit Yadav," added the contractors.

Notably, Right to Information (RTI) activist Ranjeet Soni (46) of Mukherjee Nagar in Vidisha was shot from point blank range at PWD office on Thursday evening, said the police. SP Monika Shukla told Free Press that the victim was a contractor but quit the job about six years back. Presently, he was working as an RTI activist.

On Thursday around 5.15 pm, PWD office staff heard gunshot and rushed out only to find Ranjeet in a pool of blood.

The SP added that people called the police and rushed the victim to a nearby hospital where he was declared brought dead.

The police officials, including SP and Inspector General of Police, rushed to the spot.

The SP added that the police have registered an FIR under Section 302 of the IPC and started the investigation. The police have also started collecting CCTV footage of the area to identify the accused of the case.