A person has been apprehended for the murder of a youth during the ongoing Winter Carnival 2025 in Manali on Wednesday night. The victim has been identified as Daksh, 19, a resident of Vashisht village in Kullu district. The murder reportedly took place on the left side of the stage. The police said the victim was apparently hit on his neck with a broken piece of glass, but added that the exact nature of the weapon would be clear after the postmortem examination. They ruled out the possibility of robbery and claimed that the assailant and the victim knew each other.
Karthikeyan Gokulchandran, superintendent of police (SP), Kullu, said: “The incident took place when a cultural event was on during the ongoing Winter Carnival in Manali. One of our police teams has apprehended the suspect, who is also a local. There were police personnel stationed on duty near the stage and they ran towards the spot after hearing the shouting of people. A police team rushed the victim to a nearby hospital where doctors declared the victim brought dead. The suspect was apprehended. Sudden provocation and an old dispute could be the reason behind the crime. We found the victim’s valuables intact.”
Meanwhile, villagers along with the kin of the victim Thursday gathered at the government hospital where the body of Daksh was kept and demanded strict action against the suspect. Local MLA Bhuvneshwar Gaur; Raman Kumar Sharma, sub-divisional magistrate (Manali); and K D Sharma, deputy superintendent of police, reached the site and pacified the agitated villagers.
Later, Gokulchandran also came to the spot. A case has been registered under Section 103 (murder) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), 2023, at Manali police station. The four-day-long Winter Carnival in Manali started on January 20. On Wednesday, Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu also attended the carnival.
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