She raised her brother’s children as her own. He killed her for Rs 50 lakh in Delhi’s Burari

Around 5 am the next day, police said, Girdhari came downstairs to turn on the water motor and found the main gate open. He went into the ground-floor room to tell Anita off — and found her dead, her throat slit. He ran outside for help.

Girdhari, however, found himself in police custody. A PCR call had been made saying that a man had killed his wife.

But police said they found no murder weapon on him or around the house. During questioning, Girdhari told them that the last person he had seen with Anita was her brother.

Within hours, the investigation had taken a different turn: police were now looking at Kamal. They picked him for questioning and he admitted to the crime — police said he allegedly killed his sister for money and tried to frame her husband. They arrested him. But two of his relatives, who allegedly helped him, had fled.

Last month, nearly nine years later, police caught one of them in Bihar.

A close-knit family, then a second marriage

Police said Anita, 45, worked as a house help. Girdhari was a mason. The couple had no children. But she was deeply attached to Kamal’s two sons with his first wife, who died in 2015.

“When Kamal’s first wife fell sick, it was Anita who cared for them. The children treated her no less than their own mother,” said an officer who investigated the case.

Anita even willed her savings and assets on Kamal and his eldest son, Surya Kant, police said.

Her second house in the same locality was to go to Surya Kant after her death. Kamal was also the nominee on insurance policies taken by Anita and Girdhari around September 2016, each worth Rs 50 lakh, said police.

However, things started to sour when Kamal married Anjani. “Anjani, who had three children — two girls and a boy in their teens — from her first marriage, was working as a house help to sustain herself when she met Kamal,” said a senior police officer.

Her arrival led to fights between the sisters-in-law. Anita kept asking Kamal to leave Anjani, but he could not do so. Police said Kamal eventually had enough.

He later told police: “My sister didn’t like my wife. So I had to shift to a different house in the neighbourhood with Anjani and the children. Her two brothers, Chandan and Kundan (in their late 30s), also came to live with us.”

The move eased some of the tension. The women visited each other when someone fell sick or on birthdays, maintaining what police described as a level of “decency”.

Kamal was increasingly surrounded by Anjani’s family.

She had brought her brothers to Delhi from their hometown in Bihar’s Samastipur, where jobs were scarce, about two years earlier. Chandan became a chief mason, while Kundan worked at construction sites. Police said Anjani’s father, who worked as a guard in South Delhi, also visited the family.

Money problems piled up

Kamal had been running his ‘clinic’ near Azadpur Mandi for nearly two decades. Police described him as a “Jhola chap (fake)” doctor and said he had only studied till Class 10 in Patna.

By 2017, the ‘clinic’ was not doing well. According to his statement to police, he had around Rs 12 lakh in debt. “I didn’t have any money to pay for it. I was taking more loans, and it was all just piling up,” Kamal told the police during questioning.

Then, police said, he remembered his sister’s insurance policy and hatched a chilling plan to get rid of her and blame her husband, as they fought a lot. He roped in Chandan and Kundan, promising them Rs 2 lakh each.

On August 20, police said Kamal heard Anita and Girdhari fighting and set his plan in motion. He went to Azadpur Mandi and bought an iron knife for Rs 100, police claimed.

The next evening, Kamal went to Anita’s house with his wife. After some time, he asked Anjani to leave, saying he wanted to speak to his sister about something personal.

Later that night, Chandan and Kundan arrived. “The three then held Anita down and slit her throat,” a police officer claimed.

In August 2026, a Crime Branch team received a tip-off about a man accused in a murder case in Burari. He turned out to be Chandan. (Express photo)

The catch

“During investigation, it was revealed that accused Kamal Kumar, in conspiracy with his two brothers-in-law, Chandan and Kundan, murdered his sister Anita,” said DCP Sanjeev Yadav.

Chandan and Kundan were long gone after the crime. Police, at that time, couldn’t trace the duo.

About a decade later, in August 2026, a Crime Branch team comprising Inspector Robin Tyagi and Head Constable Mintu Yadav received a tip off about a man accused in a murder case in Burari. They were also told the man had almost been caught in Bihar last year but escaped while being brought to Delhi, despite having both hands cuffed.

Police dug further and realised the man was Chandan. They traced him to Lakhisrai, Bihar.

“On the night of May 28, we reached his house,” an officer said.

The house had a boundary wall nearly 20 feet high, topped with four-foot slanting slopes. Chandan, wary after his earlier escape, had made the house difficult to enter.

“We had to stand on top of each other, like you do during Dahi handi. Then one of us reached the top, climbed over the slope and entered the compound,” said a police officer.

The team covered the front and back entrances before barging into the house. Chandan was inside with his wife, two children and mother. He was arrested.

“He hid in different places in Bihar and worked as a labourer to evade arrest. He claimed Kundan was found dead in 2018 near the railway station in their village,” said DCP Yadav.

Police are still probing his claim.

“No one saw his body apart from Chandan. He couldn’t even tell us where he performed Kundan’s last rites,” said a police officer.

Kamal, police said, was jailed and sentenced.

And Anjani?

Police said she is still living in the old house in Burari.