19 Years Later: Jamshedpur Court Accepts Murder Complaint Against TM Jewellers Owner

Jamshedpur: In a major breakthrough spanning nearly two decades, a Jamshedpur court has established that Ajay Burman was murdered in a coordinated attack by Milan Adesara, owner of TM Jewellers, his nephew Sandeep Adesara, store staff, and hired thugs.

The Court of Judicial Magistrate Shri Arvind Kumar has officially taken cognizance of the murder complaint under Section 103(2) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) against Milan Adesara and the other co-accused, summoning them to appear in court.

The Fatal Assault Inside the Jewelry Shop

The case dates back to May 11, 2007. Ajay Burman (24), a skilled goldsmith who had trained for nearly a decade at Chhagan Lal Jewellers in Bistupur, visited the Golmuri branch of TM Jewellers at Akashdeep Plaza to collect outstanding dues for work he had done for them.

According to family members and a companion who accompanied him, Burman waited inside the shop for about an hour. Once the customers left, the store management turned off the CCTV cameras. Milan Adesara, Sandeep Adesara, their staff, and hired muscle then brutally assaulted Burman. One attacker struck Burman near the temple with a steel stool, causing him to collapse.

The accused then dragged Burman’s body to the parking lot. Adesara contacted the then-station house officer (SHO) of Sidhgora, Sakaldev Ram, who arrived at the scene. Eyewitnesses confirmed that Burman had already succumbed to his injuries before the police arrived.

Fabricated Extortion and Mob Lynch Claims Exposed

To cover up the crime, the police and the shop owner filed matching First Information Reports (FIRs) claiming that Burman had entered the shop under a fake name, armed with a bomb and a revolver, to extort money. They claimed an angry crowd of 250 to 300 people gathered in the parking lot and lynched him. Concurrently, the police allegedly destroyed the original complaint filed by Burman’s family.

However, an independent investigation by the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) debunked the mob theory, proving that Burman was a regular vendor for TM Jewellers who was beaten to death inside the store over a financial dispute.

The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) subsequently stepped in. A subsequent police report submitted to the NHRC admitted that:

• No weapon or bomb was visible on the security footage.
• The CCTV cameras were deliberately switched off just before the assault.
• The post-mortem report entirely contradicted the police and owner’s initial lynch mob narrative.

The Long Battle Over the Dismissed Case

For years, the accused and complicit police officials tried to manipulate the legal process. In October 2010, SHO Sakaldev Ram filed a Final Report True (FRT) in collusion with the accused, successfully getting the case dismissed in February 2022 without ever notifying the victim’s family. It was later discovered that the order sheets of the case had vanished from the Jamshedpur Civil Court records.

PUCL challenged the fraudulent closure in the Jharkhand High Court. In April 2018, the High Court declared the closure illegal and directed the family to file a formal protest/complaint petition. Following successive technical hurdles and revisions in the Sessions Court, the Magistrate’s Court finally accepted the complaint, formally recognizing the incident as a targeted murder and holding Milan Adesara and his associates accountable.

Advocates Akhilesh Shrivastava, Amitabh Kumar, Manjari Sinha, and Nirmal Ghosh represented the victim’s family. Shrivastava and Kumar, who have fought the legal battle for 19 years, expressed deep satisfaction with the court’s decision to finally bring the accused to justice.