PALAKKAD: The accused confessed that he murdered his friend at Ottapalam was due to a dispute while drinking alcohol. The murdered Aashiq and the accused Firoz were accused in several ganja cases. However, when Firoz tried to go abroad, Ashiq said that he cannot handle the cases alone, which caused the tussle.

Aashiq first took the knife but Firoz grabbed it and stabbed Aashiq in the neck. The whereabouts of the knife have not yet been determined. The postmortem of the body will take place today. Meanwhile, relatives identified Ashiq's body. He was identified by a thread tied around his hand and a ring on his finger.

The murder surfaced when Mohammad Firoz, a native of East Ottapalam, was arrested and questioned by the Pattambi police yesterday in connection with a burglary at a mobile shop in 2015. When asked where his co-accused Ashiq was, he revealed that he had killed and buried him.

He was killed on the night of December 17 at the military ground in East Ottapalam. He revealed that the body was loaded into a pickup autorickshaw and taken to an unoccupied area in the Palappuram area and buried. Locals and relatives said Ashiq had been missing since December 17. He was thought to have gone into hiding as he was involved in drug trafficking and various theft cases. Therefore, no one lodged a complaint.