‘Woh ekdum toot gaya’: A lover’s betrayal, a body in the fields, and a murder plot

It was 2010. A man and a woman were set to be married — an alliance arranged by their families. Like many such unions in the village, caste was taken into account before the match was finalised.

She was 20, from another village in the same district. He was 22, a tailor by profession.

Soon after, he left for Gurgaon in search of better opportunities. In 2012, they had their first child, a daughter. A year and a half later, they welcomed a boy.

In the early years of their marriage, he worked in the city while his wife remained in the village. But after their son’s birth, she moved to Gurgaon with the children. They lived in a four-storey brick building.

Her two brothers were already in the city, earning a living through odd jobs — running vegetable carts, among other things.

By the start of the new decade, the man’s tailoring business had grown. He earned around Rs 30,000 a month, getting clothes stitched and made at scale and charging companies on a per-piece basis.

Apart from his own children, he also cared for his nephew — the son of his elder brother who had passed away recently.

His disposition was amiable and humble — he stayed calm even when his subordinates and co-workers made mistakes.

In late 2023, another man — 34, recently separated, with a boy and a girl of his own — shifted to the area. He was from Meerut, had dropped out before his Class 10 exams, and ran a small truck-hiring and booking business.

Physically, he was shorter — 5’0” to the husband’s 5’3” — but sported a fuller head of hair. He was clever, calculating.

As fate would have it, the new neighbour moved into the room — a 10mx12m space — adjacent to the couple’s. Both rooms were perched on the open terrace of the building. They sat at right angles to each other, separated by a single common wall.

By early 2024, an affair blossomed between the woman and her neighbour. There was no one to disturb them during the day — both sets of kids were at school, and her husband remained at his factory from 9 am-9 pm.

Frequent visits to each other’s rooms grew. But they didn’t confine this romance to the terrace. When their pockets allowed, they would sometimes venture to places outside. The lover next door even let his workers handle his business to spend more time with her.

No one got a whiff of their secret rendezvous, not family or neighbours. The other residents hardly ventured to the terrace, not even to dry their clothes, as the building landlord had installed clotheslines on every floor. Even the labourers who lived in the locality — a peri-urban village near the Delhi-Gurgaon border — did not interact much with either family.

In March, the neighbour captured a private, intimate video of the two on his phone.

Four months later, things began to fall apart.

On July 25, the woman’s daughter — now 13 years old — stumbled upon the video recording while idly handling the neighbour’s phone. That evening, she revealed what she’d found to her father — in the woman’s presence.

Alarmed, the woman immediately sent a message to her lover next door: their secret had been exposed.

Whether the husband confronted his wife that night or the next morning remains unclear. But he neither uprooted his family nor confronted his wife’s lover. He appeared outwardly unaffected, carrying on as if nothing had happened. Colleagues recall him as his usual calm self, even on July 26.

The neighbour, meanwhile, was glued to his Chinese smartphone. Something sinister was brewing in his mind. He watched — and rewatched — a particular set of videos. He and the woman allegedly remained in frequent contact over the phone that day, scheming.

Two days later, around 10 pm on July 28, the woman went to a police station with a written complaint — her husband had been missing since July 27.

The station registered a case under the relevant sections, but the police smelled something fishy. “How could she have been silent for all of 27th (July) and the better part of 28th July?” asked Station House Officer (SHO), Inspector Balraj, who goes by his first name.

Police then checked her call detail records.

“We found out that she had spoken with the neighbour over the phone on the 28th for a minute, and deleted the call log. That was the first sign that something seemed off, that her story might not be true,” Balraj told The Indian Express.

The next day, her family and neighbours started calling up the police, saying they should do more.

“Eventually, I told her brother — your sister knows exactly what happened to her husband, and where he is,” said Inspector Balraj.

“But he wouldn’t believe it.”

Her brothers kept pressing her for the truth. But she deflected their questions.

Then, on July 31, she returned to the police station — this time with another written complaint.

“Now her expression had changed. She was nervous and afraid,” said Balraj, also the case’s investigating officer (IO).

Referring to the March video — the one her daughter inadvertently saw — she told the police that her neighbour allegedly raped her while her husband was at work and recorded the act.

She claimed he had threatened her — that he would make the video viral if she told anyone and have her husband picked up.

Then came the final startling claim. She told police she suspected that the neighbour had abducted her husband from near his workplace.

Based on this complaint, police lodged another FIR for rape, criminal intimidation, and house trespass with preparation for hurt, assault, or wrongful restraint.

On August 1, police arrested the neighbour.

When he was told why he had been arrested, he was shocked.

“Isse woh ekdum toot gaya. Itne saath rehne ke vaado ke baad bhi yeh. (This broke him. Even after they had made promises of being with each other…),” said the SHO.

During preliminary questioning, the neighbour told the police he had been in an ‘illicit relationship’ with the woman. “But that’s all he admitted to initially,” said the officer.

Hours later, he finally broke down.

“He recalled how the woman had told him she wouldn’t leave his side, even if everyone found out about the affair. He said it (their relationship) started with just keeping her company during the day, but over time, he began to believe it was love — even for her. She had given him the impression that they would eventually settle down and live together, perhaps after the children finished school. He would share all this with his uncle,” said Balraj.

The neighbour then told the police about what went down on July 26.

He claimed that he and his three accomplices grabbed the deceased from the road, stuffed him into a vehicle, allegedly strangled him with a rope inside, and killed him, police said.

They buried the body in a field behind several high-rises in Sector 36.

Police took him to the spot the same day, around 11 pm. He could not bear the stench and covered his nose when the body was being dug up — and fainted when it was taken out.

“Maine usse kahan tune hi toh dafnaya tha, abhi dikkat kyu? Ab pachtayega (I told him, you buried it, why is it troubling now? Now you will regret it),” said Inspector Balraj.

When the police checked his phone, they found further clues of his alleged involvement. His recent YouTube search history was replete with videos of two crimes — the brutal murder of Raja Raghuvanshi in Shillong, and the killing in Meerut, where a husband’s dismembered body was disposed of in a drum by his wife and her lover.

“He watched those videos over and over — trying to understand how he could commit a similar crime and avoid the mistakes that led to the arrest of the accused in those cases,” said Balraj.

Further questioning revealed how calculated the plan had been. “The idea was that if the body was ever discovered, they could pass it off as a suicide. That’s why they used a rope and left the deceased dressed in the same clothes he wore at the factory,” said the officer.

“But there was one flaw in their plan — how would a man who committed suicide bury himself?” he said.

Over the next few days, more arrests would follow.

At 5.30 am on August 2, Inspector Balraj and his team arrived at the paddy fields of Bastaura, a village in Meerut — they were tracking a lead that two other suspects involved in the murder were around.

“We found them and gave chase through the fields. They ran hard and did not stop until I threatened to fire,” said Balraj.

Police arrested the two. During questioning, the duo admitted that they had travelled to Gurgaon at the request of a person known to the neighbour. Acting on his instructions, they — along with others — abducted the victim.

Finally, on August 2, police arrested the woman.

They also arrested the neighbour’s uncle from Gurgaon, who had allegedly advised him on how to hide the evidence — bury the body deep in a pit and cover it with soil to mask the odour.

Police questioning revealed that the ‘illicit’ affair had been going on for about a year.

“Ek dusre ke akelapan ko unhone… (They dealt with their loneliness that way),” said Balraj.

The woman stayed in constant contact with her neighbour over the phone throughout the execution of the crime, police said, adding that the woman filed a missing person’s complaint to mislead the police.

She even blocked the numbers of those calling on her late husband’s phone after the incident.

The man, in turn, had sold dreams to his uncle about his lover to legitimise the affair, police said. “Voh unhe sapne dikhata, ki ghar mein nayi bahu ayegi, roti pakaegi, budhape mein aapko sambhalegi (He would tell the uncle that with a new bride at home, there would be someone to make food and take care of them in old age),” said Inspector Balraj.

The final arrest was made on August 3. It was the neighbour’s friend, the one who had enlisted the others for the crime.

All six accused are now in judicial custody.

“Unka planning tagda tha (their planning was solid). It wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment act, or they wouldn’t have used a rope and made other preparations… We managed to nab everyone involved, despite the body being discovered days later,” added Inspector Balraj, expressing pride in his team’s efforts.

He said the woman’s family has stopped talking to her.

One of her elder brothers, though, maintained there was a possibility of her innocence. “The police did their bit and worked hard, but we still await concrete evidence that my sister was involved. We did not know anything about the accused or their alleged affair.”

He remained guarded when asked about his sister’s personality and childhood. “It’s not what you might assume — that she was a certain kind of person in childhood and that led to all this. We didn’t interact much back then, as I was often working in different cities,” the brother said.

For now, his thoughts are with his nephew and niece, wondering who will look after them while the legal battle and police investigation drag on.

Meanwhile, as she was led away to judicial custody, the woman fired a parting shot at her former lover.

She told the investigating officer: “Ise phaansi do (hang him)”.