Indian-origin CEO Tushar Atre was kidnapped and killed in California in 2019.
Tushar Atre, the 50-year-old Indian-origin CEO and a cannabis entrepreneur who was kidnapped and killed in 2019, allegedly made his employees do 500 pushups for their paychecks, a suspected killer told the jury as the trial of the murder is going on. 23-year-old Joshua Camps, 22-year-old Kurtis Charters, 22-year-old Stephen Lindsay and 19-year-old Kaleb Charters, brother of Kurtis, were arrested soon after Atre was found murdered on a property in the Santa Cruz Mountains.Kurtis and Lindsay were convicted earlier this year of first-degree murder in separate trials. Kaleb’s trial started this month, according to local reports, and he told the jury that he worked at Atre’s cannabis farm for 10 days in August 2019. But they had to work from dawn to dusk on an agreed rate of $200 per day. Lindsy and Kaleb left the work after 10 days when Atre found that one of the keys to his farm trucks was missing and he bounced the checks. Kaleb told the jury earlier this month that Atre once humiliated them because the keys were lost. When they found the keys, Atre rebuked them for wasting his time. Kaleb told the jury that Atre asked them to do 500 pushups for $1400. The amount was $600 less than the $2,000 the workers were expecting for a 10-day work period, the court heard.Several of his former employees have now testified that the multimillionaire boss had created a hostile, fear-based work environment where Atre used to withhold payment, yell at them and fire them.
How Tushar Atre was kidnapped and murdered
Several assailants broke into Atre’s coastal estate and he was seen stepping into a white BMW. Hours later, his body was found at one of his properties in the Santa Cruz Mountains. He had been stabbed and then kidnapped, and then shot dead. Atre was the founder and CEO of a corporate marketing firm, AtreNet, and Interstitial Systems, a cannabis company with a marijuana farm and laboratory in the Santa Cruz region. Lindsay and Kaleb planned a robbery at Atre’s place but it turned into chaos as Atre started running when they stabbed and shot him.
