Kamaldeep Mittal Murder: How F&O Trading and a Childhood Friendship Turned Fatal in Patiala
Patiala MBBS student murder: Stabbed 28 times by his childhood friend over stock market losses, the story of Kamaldeep Mittal goes beyond crime — it’s Punjab’s F&O trap.
North Desk Correspondent
Chandigarh, May 22
On the evening of May 17, two young men from the same village sat together at Patiala’s Polo Ground, watching a cricket match under the lights. They were childhood friends — had been since the days they walked the same lanes in Bareta, a small town in Mansa district. After the match, they walked back to a PG accommodation in New Lal Bagh, watched a movie, had dinner. By all appearances, it was an ordinary evening between old friends.
By 7 the next morning, one of them was dead. Stabbed 28 times.
The survivor allegedly withdrew cash from his dead friend’s ATM card before leaving Patiala.
Patiala MBBS student murder: Kamaldeep Kumar Mittal had done everything right. The son of Mahinder Mittal, a resident of Bareta, he had cleared one of India’s most competitive entrance examinations and secured a seat at Government Medical College, Patiala — a final-year MBBS student, months away from becoming a doctor. In a town like Bareta, in a district like Mansa, that is not a small thing. It is the culmination of a family’s sacrifices, a community’s hopes, years of disciplined study.
Mohit Verma had grown up beside him. Same neighbourhood, same school, same classrooms until Class 10. Then the paths diverged. Kamaldeep went on. Mohit dropped out. While his friend moved to Patiala to pursue medicine, Mohit went to work at his father’s jewellery shop back in Bareta.
What happened in the years between Class 10 and that May evening is a story that is playing out quietly across Punjab’s small towns — in living rooms, WhatsApp groups, and informal meetings where someone always knows someone who “made big money” in the share market.
The Pitch
Nobody knows exactly when Mohit first spoke to Kamaldeep about trading. But at some point — investigators are still piecing together the timeline — the childhood friend became a financial guide of sorts. The markets were booming. F&O trading, Futures and Options, was being discussed in the same breath as quick wealth in towns that had never had a stockbroker. Online platforms made it frictionless. A phone, a PAN card, a bank account — and you were in.
Mohit reportedly promised significant returns. Kamaldeep, a medical student with limited income but a trusted friend as his entry point, was convinced. He reached out to a relative based abroad. Nearly ₹35 lakh came in — NRI money, the kind that represents years of labour in a foreign country, sent back in trust.
It went into trading accounts. Then, investigators allege, into online gaming and betting.
It did not come back.
This is not an unusual story. SEBI’s own studies have repeatedly found that the overwhelming majority of retail F&O traders — in some surveys, over 90 per cent — lose money. The instruments are designed for institutional hedgers, not individuals operating on borrowed capital and peer advice. But the pitch always sounds the same: huge profits, minimal risk, I know how this works. In Punjab’s semi-urban belt, where aspirations are high and formal financial literacy is low, the informal pipeline of friends introducing friends to speculative markets has become its own quiet epidemic.
Kamaldeep was not naive. He was intelligent enough to clear NEET, disciplined enough to survive four years of MBBS. But he apparently trusted the wrong person with the wrong money.
The Pressure Builds
As the losses mounted, so did the tension. Police say Kamaldeep began demanding his money back — not just the initial investment, but the ₹12 to 13 lakh that Mohit had allegedly taken directly, money that had not been returned and was not going to be.
There is a particular kind of desperation that sets in when borrowed money disappears. The ₹35 lakh had not been Kamaldeep’s to lose. Someone abroad had trusted him with it. That trust was now a weight. And Mohit, the man who had led him into this, was not repaying.
At some point, Kamaldeep threatened to file a complaint. That, investigators believe, was the moment the calculation changed.
Police describe what followed as premeditated. Not a fight that escalated. Not a moment of rage. A plan.
The Last Evening before the Patiala MBBS student murder
Patiala MBBS student murder: Mohit arrived in Patiala on May 17 and checked into Kamaldeep’s PG room. This was not unusual — he was a regular visitor. The victim’s father would later tell police that Kamaldeep had called him that Sunday evening, mentioned Mohit’s visit, said his friend would stay overnight. There was no alarm in his voice. Why would there be? This was someone he had known his entire life.
The two went to the Polo Ground for the match and the IPL event. They came back, watched a film in the room. Had dinner. It was, by every outward measure, a normal night between old friends from the same village.
Mohit had already hidden the knife.
The next morning, as Kamaldeep prepared to leave for college, Mohit attacked. Twenty-eight stab wounds, concentrated around the neck. The assault was so ferocious that the knife’s handle separated from the blade. He used the handle to continue.
Police say he made sure Kamaldeep was dead before he stopped.
After
What happened next –that is after the Patiala MBBS student murder–tells you something about the coldness of what had been planned. Mohit picked up Kamaldeep’s phone. Transferred ₹25,000 to his own account via UPI. Police would later note that he had access to the victim’s passwords — the password, investigators revealed, was linked to the birth date of a mutual female acquaintance, a detail police are still examining for any deeper significance.
Then Mohit left. He had self-inflicted injuries from the knife. He went to a hospital in Patiala for treatment but fled mid-procedure when perhaps the questions became uncomfortable. He surfaced later at a facility in Samana, where he got stitched up.
CCTV footage near the PG captured him walking away in blood-stained clothes.
Kamaldeep’s body was found that evening, after family members, unable to reach him on his phone, alerted his local guardians. He lay in a pool of blood in the same room where, hours earlier, two friends from Bareta had watched a film together.
The Reckoning
Patiala Police, to their credit, cracked the case of Patiala MBBS student murder in under 48 hours. A team led by SPs Palwinder Cheema and Gurbans Bains, with CIA in-charge Pardeep Bajwa, traced Mohit through mobile data, banking records, CCTV footage and UPI transactions.
Cheema told North Desk that the accused had left his digital footprints behind which was the single largest factor behind his arrest. A local court has since remanded him to four days of police custody.
Investigators say he is not remorseful.
Kamaldeep’s family has demanded the death penalty. His father, Mahinder Mittal, told police his son had no enemies. He had only ever wanted to become a doctor.
Postscript: The Bigger Picture
Patiala MBBS student murder: Kamaldeep Mittal’s murder is, at one level, a crime story. A financial dispute, a broken friendship, a premeditated killing. The police will build their case. The courts will deliver a verdict.
But it is also a story about what is happening to young men in Punjab’s small towns right now. The markets are accessible as never before. The informal networks of friends and acquaintances selling each other on trading dreams are everywhere. The money flowing in is often not theirs — it is borrowed from relatives, including from the diaspora abroad, whose remittances have long been the economic spine of this region.
There are no guardrails on who can introduce whom to F&O trading. No regulation on the peer-to-peer pipeline. No warning loud enough to cut through when the person making the pitch is someone you have known since childhood, someone whose word you have never had reason to doubt.
Bareta lost one of its most promising sons to this. He was 24. He was months from becoming a doctor.
FACT CHECK ON PUNJAB CRIME: Punjab is Safer. But the Minister Told You Only Half the Story.
2 Comments