The crime branch of the Delhi police has arrested an NRI man for brutally murdering his wife of four years and stuffing her body in a trolley bag and dumping it in Haryana.
Initially, Sumit Handa, the husband who had worked in several countries, tried diverting police attention by filing a complaint stating that his wife had eloped with someone, but he found himself in the police net after intense probe.
In his complaint, he also alleged that his wife, after giving him tea laced with sedatives, left his home with jewellery and cash.
The victim, 27-year-old Niranjani Pillay, is a South African passport holder and her family had migrated there long back.
Handa and Niranjani tied the knot in 2007 after a two-year-long courtship and relocated to India last year, but their marriage was under strain, the police said, adding that Mr Handa’s one-year-old daughter was away from the capital during the incident.
Based on a specific information, the police arrested Mr Handa for killing Niranjani. The police claimed that during interrogation, he had admitted to have killed his wife using a knife and laptop charger on October 29 after an altercation.
“He then kept her body in the bathroom and squeezed it in a trolley bag and dumped blood-stained clothes and other incriminating materials in another bag and asked one of his colleague to drop him in Rai in Haryana,” Ashok Chand, deputy commissioner of police (crime and railways), said.
After getting dropped near a petrol pump in Rai, Mr Handa carried the bags 200 meters away from the road, dumped them, poured petrol and burnt them.
“He waited for more than two hours and when the body was burnt he left the place. He also collected some of the ashes in a polythene bag,” Mr Chand said.
To divert police attention, the accused, the police said, also sent a number of mails to his wife’s email id from his account asking her to come back.
“He kept telling this to his friends and he also kept searching on Net whether any burnt dead body had recently been recovered in Haryana,” Mr Chand said.