3 min readMumbaiMay 8, 2025 10:51 AM IST
First published on: May 8, 2025 at 10:23 AM IST
The Dindoshi police Tuesday arrested a 44-year-old Jaipur woman who allegedly travelled to Mumbai, killed her “lover” in a Malad hotel room, put a misleading message on the family’s WhatsApp group showing that he died by suicide, and then travelled back home the same night.
Barkat Rathod had allegedly been in an extramarital affair for the last two years with her husband’s brother-in-law Imamuddin Ansari, a Malad-based interior decorator businessman living in Mira Road near Mumbai. The police said Barkat’s husband left her after discovering her affair with Ansari and that she had been living with her mother at her place in Jaipur for the past two years.
Barkat allegedly strangled Ansari in the Malad hotel room in Mumbai on May 4 and put out a message from his phone on the family WhatsApp group saying that he was taking the drastic step due to harassment from his wife, who suspected that there was an extramarital relationship between him and Barkat. The message further stated that there was no affair between them and that the allegations were merely rumours deliberately spread by Ansari’s wife, the police said. Barkat then travelled to Surat and moved to her mother’s place in Jaipur, said the police.
After Ansari’s family saw the message on the family WhatsApp group, they became suspicious about the language used as he was illiterate. The family subsequently informed the Naya Nagar police in Mira Road.
After discovering that Ansari’s mobile phone’s last location was Malad in Mumbai, his 23-year-old son went there and started enquiring about him at nearby hotels, showing his photo.
CCTV footage proves vital
At the Shalimar hotel near the Malad railway station in Mumbai, a staffer identified Ansari as a guest who had checked in the hotel along with a burqa-clad woman. The staffer presented copies of the two Aadhaar cards submitted by Ansari and “his wife”. Ansari’s son identified the burqa-clad woman from the CCTV footage at the hotel as his relative Barkat, said the police.
When the police checked the hotel room, they found Ansari lying semi-naked on the floor. He was rushed to the Siddharth hospital, where he was declared dead. After the postmortem report revealed there were nail marks around his neck and that he was strangled to death, the police registered a murder case and launched an operation to trace Barkat.
Based on her mobile location, she was traced to Jaipur and was subsequently detained and brought to Mumbai. After due verification of the circumstantial and technical evidence, she was placed under arrest on murder charges, said a police officer.
The Mumbai police are searching for a man accused of murdering his wife (Express Archive Photo) 
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