Agra (UP), Jun 29 (IANS): A young man was allegedly kidnapped for a ransom of Rs 2 crore by his friends and then killed. His body was cremated at Balkeshwar Ghat by passing it off as a Covid patient's remains.

Sachin Chauhan, 25, was the only son of cold storage owner Suresh Chauhan. He was kidnapped on June 21 and murdered the same night.

His family members had filed a missing complaint but he could not be traced.

The Special Task Force received a tip-off on Sunday night after which they detained five people, including Sachin's close friend Harsh Chauhan, who is son of his father's business partner. They confessed to the murder.

The arrested accused include Sachin Aswani, 32, Happy Khanna, 35, Manoj Bansal, 30, Rinku, 25 and Harsh Chauhan, 24.

According to police, Sachin and Harsh used to frequently visit a sports club owned by Aswani in Agra's Dayalbagh area.

Sachin became friends with Aswani and began to borrow money from him. When the borrowed amount reached Rs 40 lakh, Aswani asked Sachin to return the money, but he was not willing to pay back.

Aswani and Harsh then made a plan to kidnap Sachin and demand ransom of Rs 2 crore from his father.

On June 21, Aswani called Sachin to join them for a booze party at Khaspur village. He was allegedly smothered to death by the accused.

SSP Muniraj G. said, "In a bid to mislead the police, the accused bought PPE kits from a medical shop in Kamla Nagar and after covering themselves, they cremated his body at Balkeshwar under a fake name. Next day, Aswani's cousin Happy Khanna and his friend Rinku collected his ashes and immersed them in Yamuna."

STF inspector Uday Pratap Singh, said that the accused made the mistake of giving one of their relative's contact number at the ghat.

After cremation, Happy's friend Manoj Bansal took Sachin's mobile phone to Kanpur to mislead the police.

Police said that Manoj was to make the ransom call for Rs 2 crore but he could not gather courage to do so.

"When he got a call from Sachin's mother on his number, he told her that Sachin was sleeping and they were in Noida," said the police.

The family got suspicious and filed a missing complaint on June 22, police said.