Stranger saves Bareilly man moments before being buried alive by wife, kin

Time of India

02-08-2025

Bareilly: He was alive but moments from being buried — limbs shattered, dumped beside what would have been a shallow grave carved out in the forest floor — when an unknown man, walking through the woods on the edge of Bareilly appeared.
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The attackers, caught off guard, scattered into the darkness. Left behind was Rajiv Kumar, 35, bloodied and barely breathing and conscious. Police said his wife and her five brothers were among the 11 people who had brought him there with the intent to kill.
Rajiv, a doctor's assistant at Navodaya Hospital, had been ambushed on the night of July 21 at his rented home under Izzatnagar police station limits. He was beaten until his arms and legs fractured, then forced into a vehicle and driven to a forested area in CB Ganj.
Investigators believe the pit where he was found had already been dug. The assailants had begun the final stage of their plan when the stranger walked by and raised an alarm.
Not just that, he called for an ambulance, helped move Rajiv out, and left quietly.
"We don't know who he was," said Rajiv's father, Netram Kumar. "He arrived just in time and saved my son. Then he disappeared."
Rajiv remains hospitalised and under treatment for multiple injuries.
Speaking to TOI, he alleged that his wife Sadhana had tried to harm him earlier. "She wants a divorce. A while ago, she put crushed glass in my food. She has been trying to kill me. We are living separately now."
The couple married in 2009 and have two sons, aged 14 and 8, enrolled in a private school. Although Rajiv owns a house in his native village, the family had been living in a rented flat in the city—reportedly at Sadhana's insistence.
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Police believe the murder attempt was meticulously planned. "She convinced her brothers to help her," Netram said. "They brought hired men, beat my son, tied him up, took him into the forest and began to bury him.
They were minutes away from finishing it."
The FIR names Sadhana, her brothers Bhagwan Das, Premraj, Harish, and Laxman, along with one unidentified sibling and four others believed to have been hired for the attack.
Police have filed an FIR against them under BNS sections 191 (rioting), 115 (voluntarily causing hurt), 110 (attempting to commit culpable homicide), 352 (breach of peace), and 351 (criminal intimidation). SP (city) Manush Pareek said, "The assault began at the victim's home on the night of July 21.
We are trying to arrest the accused."
Rajiv, unconscious and blood-soaked when the ambulance reached him, has since been stabilised. His father, sitting beside his bed, keeps repeating one thought: the man who saved him came without warning, said nothing, and vanished. But in that moment, he did everything that mattered.