Melbourne Teacher Allegedly Murdered By Brother During India Trip

A Melbourne classroom has lost a teacher, a family has lost a father, and police in northern India are now alleging the man at the centre of it all was killed by his own brother.

Sunil Sharma, 66, an Australian citizen and maths teacher at Diamond Valley College, disappeared in Amritsar on May 22 while visiting the Punjab city to deal with property matters. He had reportedly been preparing an investment property for sale, the sort of practical trip that should have ended with paperwork, phone calls and a flight home.

Instead, Indian police now allege Sharma was drugged with sleeping pills, beaten to death with a baseball bat and dumped in a canal. The allegation, aired by Amritsar police at a Saturday press conference, puts the case in the hardest category of family violence: not a stranger in the dark, but blood in the same house.

Police have alleged Sharma’s brother, Satish Sharma, was involved in the killing. They also allege Satish Sharma’s wife and son helped remove a blood-stained mattress and the weapon. Authorities are still working to recover Sunil Sharma’s body.

For the Sharma family in Melbourne, the news came after days of dread. Sunil’s daughter, Surbhi Sharma, said authorities had told her that her uncle had been arrested. She remembered her father as intelligent, funny, strong, loving and sensitive, and said she felt lucky to have had him as a father.

There is a grim ordinariness to the known facts. A teacher close to retirement. A trip back to his country of birth. A property matter. A missing-person search that turned into a murder allegation. The details are still before police, but what has already emerged is enough to explain why the story has cut through in Australia: Sharma was not a headline figure. He was a working teacher, a father, and by his daughter’s account, a man whose students knew his patience and presence.

Diamond Valley College tributes have also reached the family, with former students and the school community recognising the years Sharma spent teaching. Those tributes now sit beside the unfinished police work in India, where investigators must still account for the final hours before Sharma vanished and the search for his remains continues.

The case is being reported by ABC News, which said the story was posted on Sunday morning and updated at 10:50am AEST. The allegations remain allegations unless tested in court.

Source: ABC News