3 min readNagpurUpdated: Mar 11, 2026 08:36 PM IST
AN OVERHEARD remark by a drunk man at a roadside dhaba helped the Nagpur rural police crack an eight-month-old murder case, leading to the arrest of five persons including the dhaba owner’s son.
The breakthrough came after a police informer reported hearing a drunken man mention that a body had been buried near a dhaba on the Khindsi road near Nagpur, Superintendent of Police Harssh A Poddar said.
“We have a network of informers around paan shops, dhabas and similar places. One of them called to say someone had got drunk and was speaking about a body they had buried near a dhaba on the Khindsi road. It was the only dhaba along that stretch,” Poddar said, adding that no missing person complaint had been filed in the case.
Acting on the tip-off on March 8, the Local Crime Branch began tracing the dhaba referred to in the conversation. As the informer did not know its name, police questioned workers at eateries along the road.
During interrogation, a worker at one of the dhabas was detained and questioned late into the night. He eventually confessed that a body had been buried months earlier in a nearby field.
The next day, police reached a field at Mauza Navargaon in Ramtek taluka. Though the suspect could not recall the exact location, he pointed to a patch where the grass appeared shorter than the surrounding vegetation. Police began digging there in the morning and recovered a buried body by afternoon in the presence of the tehsildar.
The deceased was later identified as Pratapsingh Mahadevsingh Bais (50), a cook who had been working at a roadside dhaba on the Ramtek Tumsar road. Bais, originally from Vile Parle in Mumbai, had frequent disputes with his employer over wages and had been asked to leave the job four days before the incident.
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Investigators found that on the night of July 26, 2025, an argument broke out between Bais and Piyush Kailas Thakre (23), son of the dhaba owner, Kailas Manikrao Thakre. During the altercation around 11 pm, Thakre allegedly strangled Bais with a rope.
Police said Thakre, along with three employees Shivram Potan Markam, Dharmaraj Tarachand Warthi and Dhiraj Dhanraj Wankhede buried the body in a pit in a nearby field to conceal the crime.
The murder went undetected for months as Bais had been estranged from his family and had not been in contact with them, resulting in no missing person complaint, police said.
All five accused have been arrested and booked under Sections 103(1), 238 and 3(5) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita. Further investigation is underway.
