Man kills live-in partner, forges new life – till a tip-off lands him in jail

In 2016, when Bahadur’s first wife had gone to her West Bengal home to check in on her children, he started dating Anita (25). He met her at a leading private hospital in Gurgaon where they worked as housekeeping staff; the first wife worked there too.

“As he lived in Gurgaon’s Silokhra village with his first wife, he rented a new room in Tigra village to move in with Anita, along with his family, in December 2016. His first wife came back to find he had left her for another woman,” said SHO (Sadar) Subhash Chand.

Soon, his relationship with Anita turned sour as she did not want to live with him anymore and left. Suspecting that she was cheating on him, Bahadur brought her back on February 6, 2017.

That afternoon, when his neighbours were at work, he strangled her as his mother held her legs. They could not dispose of the body that day, but the stench did not get out since it was winter. Bahadur, meanwhile, went to Sadar Bazaar, bought a tin box, and put her body inside. He called two locals to help him load the box into his father’s e-rickshaw. When they asked him what it contained, he said it had his sister’s belongings and she was getting married.

Father-son then set off for Ghasola village, 4 km away.

Said Arjun Singh, the IO in the case, “They threw the body in a marshy area and took the box back home. The next day, all three left Tigra for Badshahpur. The body was found four days later and the face was unrecognisable as it had decomposed. No one in the area could identify her as well. If the killers had left the body in the box, we could have tracked them down.”

Following this, Bahadur went to his first wife and asked her to come back but she refused. “He told her he had killed Anita… When she turned him down, he threatened to kill her if word got out about the murder. This is when he married a third woman. She convinced him to move to Jharkhand, fearing for his safety after coming to know of Anita’s death, and they went back to his village in Sahebganj district,” Singh added.

The breakthrough

ACP (Crime) Varun Dahiya said that on October 9, they received a tip-off from someone who claimed to know the identity of the woman found murdered in Ghasola and said she had details of her former husband’s role in the murder.

“The woman went to a local journalist who brought her to us. She told us the details of the company where they all worked and we videographed her statement,” the ACP said.

Armed with a name and a work address, IO Singh said they approached the hospital which gave them a Delhi apartment address where Anita lived before she moved in with Bahadur.

“Though the landlord was of little help, a helper in the building recognised Anita. When the leads started pointing to Bahadur, we went to Sahebganj and arrested him on October 11. He had started a new family with a wife and two kids. His parents fled when they came to know we had picked him up,” Singh said.

What prompted the first wife to pass on the information? She felt safer now than ever; her children had grown up and she did not fear Bahadur anymore, police said.

Not all loose ends have been tied up though as police are still clueless about Anita’s antecedents. “Her Aadhaar card, SIM, and other IDs were registered under the Delhi address and we could not find any family… she had just mentioned the names of her parents in her records at the hospital but no address,” he added.

After a post-mortem established that the woman died of strangulation, a murder case was registered against an unidentified person back in 2016. Police said Bahadaur is currently lodged in Bhondsi Jail. They are also trying to trace and arrest the accused’s parents for their role in the crime