The Muzaffarnagar police in Uttar Pradesh Sunday arrested the father and brother of a 23-year-old woman, who worked as a delivery agent, for allegedly strangling her and burning her body after pouring petrol over it.
According to the police, on June 3, a woman’s half-burnt body was found in a jungle in the Katia village under the limits of the Kakrouli police station in Muzaffarnagar.
“Her body was found in a field nearby, then the owner of the field called and informed us about it,” Joginder Singh, Station House Officer, Kakrouli, told The Indian Express.
“Once we sent her body for the postmortem, we tried to identify her. The body was completely burnt. A silver bracelet on her hand was our only clue. We first took a close photo of it (bracelet) and then started looking for missing women around the village,” SHO Singh said.
“When we moved around the village, we learned that one woman named Saraswati had been missing. Because of continuous disputes in her marriage, the girl was known in the village, and some people told us that they had not been seeing her,” said SHO Singh.
“We searched Instagram and started going through her profile. We saw the same bracelet in her pictures, and then after confirming her identity, we took her father, Rajvir Singh, 55, a labourer, and brother, Sumit, 24, a truck driver, into police custody,” said a police officer.
Sanjay Verma, Senior Superintendent of Police, said, “They admitted to killing Saraswati on the intervening night of 29 and 30 May and later throwing her body in the jungle and burning it by pouring petrol.”
According to the police, during the initial interrogation, the father and brother said they were ashamed because of the woman’s extramarital relationship with a man, identified as Amit, and her habit of constantly leaving the house to stay with him.
They allegedly told the police that they married her off to a man in the Morna village of Muzaffarnagar in 2019. However, after two years of marriage, Saraswati returned to their home. A year later, in 2022, they married her off to another man in Shamli, but she returned home after a year, the police said based on their interrogation of the accused.
“She was a graduate. Both Amit and Saraswati started working as Blinkit delivery agents in Gurgaon in 2022,” the SHO said. On May 10, Saraswati returned to her village to convince her parents about her marriage to Amit for the last time, the police said.
The SHO said they questioned Amit as well and he said he last heard from her on May 26. “She told me that it was the last time that she would try to convince her family, if they did not, then we would not get married without their consent,” Amit told the police.
Narrating the incidents on the day of the crime, Saraswati’s father and brother told the police that on the intervening night of May 29 and 30, Saraswati was leaving the house after packing her things.
“We tried to stop and convince her but she did not agree. Due to her leaving the house repeatedly, our respect in the society was getting hurt. We were ashamed of it, so we, along with our friend, truck cleaner Hardayal, killed her by strangling her,” the accused was quoted as saying by the police.
“We then took her body 5 km away and threw it on the bank of a canal in the jungle of the village and then burned the body by pouring petrol on it to hide her identity and we came home,” the accused allegedly told the police.
SHO Singh said the police will soon arrest the third accused, Hardayal. They filed an FIR for murder and tampering of evidence Sunday on the basis of the complaint received from the village chowkidar, he said.
According to the police, on June 3, half-burnt body of a woman was found in the jungle of the Katia village under the limits of the Kakrouli police station in Muzaffarnagar. 
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