Suhaib Ilyasi, once host of India’s Most Wanted, convicted in wife’s murder

Ilyasi, who shot to fame as the host of the crime show, India’s Most Wanted, was arrested on March 28, 2000, in connection with the death of his wife, Anju. Charges were framed against him after his sister-in-law and mother-in-law alleged he used to torture his wife for dowry.

Lawyer Satender Sharma, who appeared on behalf of the complainant, Anju’s sister, said it was a “long wait” for the verdict. He said that following the murder on January 11, 2000, police had filed a chargesheet under IPC sections 498A and 304B (cruelty and harassment) against Ilyasi. On March 29, 2003, the court had passed an order on the same charges. Sharma said that initially, a post-mortem was conducted by a board of three doctors, two of whom opined that the death was “suicidal”.

Sharma said, “Things did not add up and therefore I put an application in the trial court the same year to add murder charge to the case, which was dismissed. Later, I filed a writ petition in the High Court regarding the same. The High Court took into account discrepancies in Ilyasi’s statements and directed the trial court to add murder charge in the case on September 6, 2004.”

The lawyer said Anju was aware of her husband’s “illegal acts and financial misdeeds”, and wanted to shift to Canada with her child. Ilyasi did not want this to happen. “So he killed her and cooked up a story that his wife committed suicide by stabbing herself,” Sharma said. He said that another medical board was constituted to look into ambiguities between the crime scene findings and the post-mortem report. According to him, the new board opined that “the preponderance of evidence in this case points towards commission of homicide. The utmost surprising, disturbing fact of the scene of crime and incident is that there are no cuts on the clothes of the deceased”.

According to the lawyer, some of the ‘inconsistencies’ were:

Ilyasi claimed his wife stabbed herself twice in front of him, even though he was just 4-5 feet away.

Ilyasi, in his statement after the arrest, said that “paet par safed sa nishan tha aur khoon nahi nikal raha tha (there was a white mark on the abdomen, there was no blood)”.

There were blood spots at different places inside the house, which Ilyasi said was ‘menstrual blood’. The forensic report contradicted this.

Ilyasi kept a gun with bullets and said he had rushed home on the day of the murder after he got to know that his wife had it in her possession. Ilyasi said he snatched the revolver, emptied it and threw the revolver and the bullets behind the bed. However, during inquest proceedings, the revolver was found on the shelf.