According to the police, Rajinder Verma, the elder son of the deceased, suspects the role of his younger brother, Parveen Kumar, in the murder.

Rajinder first noticed the body around 8 pm.

A police party, led by SSP Arun Pal Singh, SP (D) Gurmeet Singh, DSP Balwinder Singh Randhawa and city police station SHO Rajesh Kumar, reached the spot and started investigation.

Fingerprint experts and a dog squad were also pressed into service.

Rajinder Verma, an assistant engineer in the BDO office at Khanna, told the police, “As my father did not return till evening, I started searching for him and found him dead in the one-room house, barely 100 metres away from my residence. That house belongs to me.”

Rajinder added: “After selling his house about a month ago, my father had been staying with me. He used to go for a morning walk everyday around 6 in the morning.”

While suspecting the role of his younger brother, Rajinder told the police that his father had given Parveen Rs 5 lakh to bail him out of a property dispute.

“My younger brother agreed to sell his house to my father for Rs 10.30 lakh and my father paid another Rs 2 lakh. The remaining amount was to be paid within one or two days,” Rajinder further told the police.

Sources told Newsline that the police had interrogated Parveen’s wife as he had been absconding after the incident. Parveen was also conspicuous by his absence from the cremation on Thursday.