Man killed live-in partner days before wedding, dumped headless body in Haryana

After the body was discovered, a Special Investigation Team (SIT) was constituted, which worked with two teams of the Crime Branch.

“Our primary focus was to establish the identity of the deceased. All police stations in Haryana and neighbouring Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh were alerted,” Goyal said.

The deceased woman, identified as Uma, from a village near Saharanpur, was in a relationship with the accused for the past two years. They also lived together intermittently and Uma had been pressuring him to marry her. After Bilal’s marriage was fixed, he feared Uma would approach his family and disclose their relationship, jeopardising his marriage, police said.

“During interrogation, Bilal said that on December 6, he picked up Uma from Saharanpur around 8pm in a Swift car and drove around for several hours looking for a spot to commit the crime. He eventually chose the Kalesar National Park area in Haryana,” Goyal said.

“Near Bahadurpur village, Bilal moved to the back seat of the car on the pretext of adjusting the seat belt and strangulated her. After the murder, he drove for around half a kilometre and dumped the body by the roadside within Pratap Nagar police station limits. He also decapitated the body and disposed of the head separately to prevent identification,” Goyal said.

Technical surveillance, including CCTV footage, mobile phone location tracking and the car’s registration number helped the police to trace the accused. Based on mobile location data, police reached Bilal’s house in Saharanpur’s Tidoli village on December 13.

“When the police reached his house, both his and his sister’s wedding functions were underway,” Goyal said.

“Bilal is under four-days police remand. On Sunday, based on his disclosure, the police recovered the severed head from a gorge near Laldhang in the Kalesar forest area, close to the Haryana-Himachal Pradesh border. Further investigation is underway,” Goyal said.