Ahmedabad: In a tragic tale of a love triangle, a 22-year-old youth was killed by his friend on Sunday, who later himself brought the lifeless body of the deceased to the police station here in Sola.

At approximately 4 am on Sunday, Vedant Raja, a second-year commerce student and the son of a New Zealand-based businessman, arrived at the Sola Police Station and told the cops,”My car is in the parking area… and it also has a body.” The lifeless body, identified as that of 22-year-old Swapnil Prajapati, was found lying face down on the front passenger seat of Raja’s car, having eight deep stab wounds.

Preliminary investigations by the police suggest that this killing was fueled by a love triangle, with both men entangled in a mutual romantic interest. Vedant Raja has been formally charged with the murder.

In the First Information Report (FIR) against Raja, Swapnil’s father, Hasmukh Prajapati, shared that his son had left home on Saturday afternoon and had not returned until late in the evening. Hasmukh tried to contact him around 8 pm but to no avail. On Sunday morning, a police officer, accompanied by a young man (Raja), arrived at his home and escorted him to the Sola police station. There, Hasmukh was devastated to see his son Swapnil’s lifeless body in the front seat of an SUV parked at the station.

Hasmukh Prajapati, a 52-year-old employee at a private firm in Navrangpura, revealed that Swapnil had been unemployed for the past few months, his last job at a private pathology laboratory coming to an end in August.

Inspector R. H. Solanki of the Sola police informed that the long-standing dispute over a common romantic interest had driven a wedge between Swapnil and Raja. On the Saturday evening, Raja lured Swapnil to meet near Vishwakarma Bridge, and killed him there by stabbing him. The investigators are yet to reach out to the woman involved and the friends who may possess information about the ongoing dispute.  DeshGujarat