‘Papa, mujhe maaf kar dena…’: How letter from missing daughter uncovered a sinister plot in Faridabad

The man, a humble, unlettered farmer, called out to his nephew to read its contents aloud to him. The nephew obliged.

But with each word that he heard, the man’s blood began running cold.

“Papa mujhe maaf kar dena, mujhe aisa kadam nahiuthana chaahiye tha. Mujhe malum hai ki aap hamsebahut zyaada naaraaz honge, isliye main ghar par nahiayi (Dad, please forgive me, I should not have taken such a step. I knew you would be very angry with us, that is why I did not come home)”.

The man immediately knew something was off.

For one, the tone and tenor of the letter did not sound like his 25-year-old daughter. Plus, it carried no date or signature. And above all, it was printed rather than handwritten. Why would an apparently repentant daughter print out her feelings and not pen them down?

“My father knew something was wrong right away as we already had a suspicion that the in-laws had something to do with her disappearance. We left for Faridabad the same afternoon,” the woman’s younger brother recalled.

It was not just the letter; the activities of the in-laws over the last few days had been raising suspicion among the woman’s family members.

Two days before the letter arrived, the woman’s in-laws had come to this town and distributed and pasted a bunch of missing posters – a whole month after her disappearance. A similar thing was done in a neighbouring city as well.

“This was done to make it look like we had something to do with it… that she had gone to her own relatives. It was also a way for them to playact concern about their daughter-in-law,” said the brother.

Curiously, the posters had the numbers of just the woman’s husband and father-in-law, without any mention of police or any agency that could actually help.

“It was done as a mere formality. They had not even told us,” the brother, the youngest of what were four siblings, including three sisters, said.

Communication with his sister had never been easy for this family ever since she got married in June 2023. Her elder sisters, whom she was the closest to, often shared with their father and brother how tough it was to hear from her.

“They did not give her a phone… At night, she would secretly use one belonging to her in-laws,” said the brother.

And then, the calls stopped altogether. This was the intervening night of April 21-22.

The woman’s kin tried to contact the in-laws, but with little success.

“Suddenly, we found that we could not get through most of their numbers. On the rare occasion one of my older sisters could connect with her father-in-law, he would make excuses like he was out at the factory or market. The factory was in the same colony, hardly 300 meters from their house,” said the brother.

As the woman’s family persisted, the in-laws claimed she was upset with her father and siblings and did not want to talk to them.

“We asked if we could just see her on a video call, if not talk. The father-in-law said they did not know how to initiate video calls. They knew how to make videos, though,” said the brother.

The family had not met the woman in person since December 2024.

On April 24, around 8 am, the brother got a call from an unknown number. “It was my brother-in-law — my sister’s husband. He said my sister is missing, and had likely run away with someone. The way he said it, I knew something was amiss and informed my sisters and father,” said the brother.

The family left for Faridabad. Before they could reach the city, the in-laws had filed a missing persons complaint.

On reaching the woman’s marital home, the family noticed a peculiar thing right in front of the doorsteps.

“It was a freshly-sealed pit, covered with plastic sheets. We alerted the police,” said the brother.

The police, though, proved to be of little use at the time. “Initially, they did nothing. They scolded us and asked us to check with our relatives,” he alleged.

And then, a month later, came the letter.

“Aap apni daadhi katva lena, kaafi badi ho gayi hai (Do get your beard cut, it has grown quite a lot),” the letter read, seemingly a suggestion from a doting daughter to her father, indicating she had seen him fairly recently.

“I went around the house twice but did not have the courage to come inside. Papa, I just want to tell you that I am with the boy I love…” the letter read. “I am very happy with him; he loves me a lot…”

The letter also held out hope for a reunion with the family.

“I will definitely come but not now, because you all will be angry right now. I saw you that day, my heart was full and I felt like crying… I will talk to you over the phone someday or get a letter written from wherever I go…”

Already suspicious of the in-laws’ intentions, the family bought none of it. They didn’t believe that she had eloped with someone else leaving her husband.

They began knocking at the door of various authorities in Faridabad. At the same time, they started filing complaints online.

“We followed up with authorities, met the DCPs, and even filed a complaint on the CM Window (portal),” the brother said.

On June 19, the father filed a complaint stating his worst fears – that his daughter has been murdered.

The very next day, police rushed to the in-laws’ home and found their answer right at the doorsteps of their house.

A marriage fraught from the beginning

The couple’s marriage had been arranged by the two families. The woman’s husband was a relative of her elder sister’s spouse. The family was informed that the potential groom had a factory and a three-storey house in Faridabad. This was enough for the woman’s family to agree.

Soon, the wedding was solemnised.

Two months later, the woman came back home to tend to her mother, who was ailing with heart problems.

The visit also gave her a chance to share her marital troubles.

“She told us they (in-laws) were always bothering her, complaining about not having received enough in dowry. They would make her do a lot of work at home. We came to know from the neighbours later that the only time they caught a glimpse of her was when she was either washing clothes or drying them on the terrace,” said the brother.

Soon, the family also learnt that the husband was consuming drugs. Besides, he was addicted to alcohol and cigarettes, the daughter told her father.

“We advised her to learn to adjust. My sister also spoke to her in-laws on the phone and it looked like things had begun to sort themselves out,” said the brother.

The woman went back to her in-laws. Six months into the marriage, her mother passed away and she came back home. This time, she stayed back for an entire year before being convinced by both the families to return to her husband. “She didn’t want to return at all,’’ the brother recalled.

This was early last year.

Vanishing act

On April 22, all communication ceased. The woman’s kin thought she may have been silenced for voicing her marital woes.

But the letter changed everything.

The family contacted the police, this time with a specific accusation – that the woman’s in-laws had been involved in her disappearance.

“After our repeated insistence, things moved forward and the father-in-law was called for interrogation (on June 19),” the brother said.

Rajesh Kumar Lohan, Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP), Sarai, said that on the morning of June 20, a team from the Palla police station excavated the pit outside the woman’s marital home in the presence of a duty magistrate.

A body was recovered. Though it was in a badly decomposed state, the woman’s family had no doubt. “We identified her clothes… it was her,” the brother said.

Police added charges of murder and destruction of evidence to the case, and arrested the father-in-law.

“Prima facie, it appears to be a crime arising out of a dowry dispute,” ACP Lohan had told The Indian Express at the time.

The case was transferred to the Crime Branch. As the investigation progressed, police, and the woman’s family, learnt that the case was more heinous than they had thought.

Murder ‘she’ wrote

After his arrest, the woman’s father-in-law revealed topolice exactly what unfolded during those long hours between April 21 and 22.

The woman’s mother-in-law had been away for a week, attending a wedding in another town. It was just her husband, father-in-law and sister-in-law at home. They had discussed and planned to murder her.

The father-in-law told the police that after dinner, the victim retired to her first-floor room. She had been given sugarcane juice spiked with sleeping pills.

The man then entered the room with the intention to kill his daughter-in-law, said police. However, before that, he raped the woman as she lay in an unconscious state, police said.

After the rape, as the man walked out of the room, his son asked him if he had managed to kill his wife, as planned. “The man said no and returned to the room. He then strangled his daughter-in-law with a dupatta,” said police.

The victim’s sister-in-law was also involved in the plan, police said. “She kept a watch in the hallway during the murder and later, even outside as the body was being disposed of in the pit that had been dug up for the purpose,” said police.

The body was covered with soil and a mason called the next morning to seal the pit with concrete. Since the woman’s in- laws had already told the neighbours that the pit was dug up for drainage purposes, no questions were asked.

Later, they spread the rumour that she had eloped, police said.

As for the letter, police learnt that it was the handiwork of the woman’s sister-in-law. “They were all involved in the criminal conspiracy and murder. In fact, the (husband’s) sister was the one who drafted the letter and got it printed to ward off suspicion from the family,” ACP (Crime) Aman Yadav told the Indian Express.

She was arrested on June 28, three days after her mother was nabbed in the case. Police said the mother-in-law was also privy to the plan and had deliberately timed her visit to another town at the time of the murder to avert suspicion of her involvement.

On why the family took the heinous route instead of seeking an amicable separation, the father-in-law told police they were worried about the “tag of divorce” and the expenses of paying an alimony.

The woman’s husband, meanwhile, remains absconding. Police are looking for him and believe that his arrest could throw further light on the case.

With the discovery of the body and the arrest of all but one of the accused, the case of murder has been cracked. There is, however, no closure for the woman’s family. All they are left with is grief, hope for justice and lot of regret.

“It is just my father and I at our home now. We are awaiting justice,” said the woman’s brother.

(Given the rape charges, The Indian Express has not disclosed the names of the deceased, her kin, and the accused)