PRAYAGRAJ, Nov. 15 -- A 25-year-old man, the son of a former village head, was strangled to death with an electrical wire before his body was suspended from a ceiling hook in an apparent attempt to stage the killing as a suicide in the Mandhata police station area. The victim, Mohammad Arif, was the younger son of former village head Riyazuddin of Shobhipur Parshurampur. According to family members, Arif went to sleep alone on Friday night in a room adjacent to the veranda. When he did not emerge on Saturday morning and failed to respond to calls, relatives pushed the door open, finding it unlatched from the inside, and discovered his body hanging from a ceiling hook. Noting a mark around his neck along with injuries near his ear and right toe, the family alleged foul play. Mandhata SO Anupam arrived with a forensic team to inspect the room and collect evidence; police subsequently sent the body for a postmortem. A murder case has been registered based on the complaint of the deceased's father. Dhoomanganj police have registered an FIR against six residents of Umarpur Niwa Uparhar and several unidentified accomplices for encroaching on Gram Sabha land. The case, initiated by Sadar Tehsil Lekhpal Sushil Shukla, alleges the accused colluded to seize government-owned barren land after selling their adjacent ancestral property. The accused Lavkush Yadav, Mahendra Yadav, Deepak Yadav, Prahlad Yadav, Shyam Babu and Raghunath Yadav face charges of fraud and violating the Prevention of Damage to Public Property Act. Dhoomanganj SHO Rajiv Kumar Vaish confirmed that an investigation is underway. Police in Kaushambi district have registered two separate cyber fraud cases involving losses exceeding Rs 2.16 lakh. In the first incident, Pawan Kumar of Shahpur Tikri lost Rs 1.03 lakh after downloading a malicious APK file disguised as a government link related to the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana. Karari police have registered a case, and Manjhanpur DSP Saurabh Samant stated that an investigation is in progress to trace the culprits. In a separate case, Painsa police are investigating the theft of Rs 1,13,108 from the accounts of Athar Ulla, a resident of Afzalpur Wari. Ulla reported the funds were deducted without authorization between August 9 and August 28, 2026, under the pretext of online gaming. SHO Dilip Singh confirmed that efforts are underway to apprehend the perpetrators and recover the stolen funds. Disheartened after failing to secure a government position, a young competitive exam aspirant died by suicide at her residence in Gonde village, under the Nagar Kotwali police station limits in Pratapgarh, on Saturday afternoon. The deceased, the daughter of a daily-wage worker, had been preparing for competitive exams and had recently cleared the written stage of a recruitment exam for a junior clerk post. However, her disqualification after failing the subsequent typing test reportedly led to severe depression....