Barely four months after her wedding, a 27-year-old woman in Jharkhand’s Hazaribagh district was allegedly murdered by her husband, who tried to pass it off as a road accident for a Rs 75-lakh insurance claim, police said. The victim’s father, Mahavir Prasad Mehta, told The Indian Express that his daughter, Sewanti Kumari, got married to Mukesh Kumar Mehta, a resident of Bandarbela in Hazaribagh, on June 1. “Within a few days, he and his sister-in-law Sunita Devi began harassing my daughter,” Mahavir said. On October 9, Mukesh allegedly told his wife that he was suffering from stomach pain and asked her to accompany him to Hazaribagh town for treatment. Later that night, Mahavir received a call from Mukesh’s sister-in-law, who said the couple hadn’t returned home. “When I called Mukesh’s phone, another man answered and said there had been an accident near the Lati village of Padma block on the Hazaribagh–Barhi road. He said the woman had died, but the man was alive,” Mahavir recalled. When the family reached the spot, they found Sewanti and Mukesh lying on the roadside. Police and locals initially believed it to be an accident, and the couple were taken to Sadar Hospital, Hazaribagh, where Sewanti was declared dead and Mukesh was treated for minor injuries. Padma police outpost in-charge Sanchit Dubey said Mukesh was detained on Monday as part of the inquiry, during which he allegedly confessed to killing his wife for the insurance money. “We received a call that a man and a woman had met with an accident near Lati village on the Itkhori–Chatra road. It was dark, and when we reached, we saw a bike lying on the road, the woman dead, and the man lying nearby. We sent both to the hospital by ambulance,” Dubey told The Indian Express. “The woman was declared dead, but the man got himself admitted to a private hospital nearby. The next morning, he was discharged as medically fit,” Dubey said. Subsequently, the police began noticing inconsistencies in the accidedent story. “During our investigation, we found that neither the motorcycle nor the man’s body had any marks like those generally seen in case of an accident. The bike had no scratches, no dents,” Dubey said. In his confession, Mukesh told police that he had taken his wife’s life for insurance money. He had taken a policy in his wife’s name barely a month earlier. “The couple had been married four months ago, and one month before the incident, Mukesh bought an insurance policy with a Rs 15-lakh payout in case of natural death and Rs 75-lakh in case of accidental death,” the officer said, adding, “This made the motive clear. He had planned to kill her and pass it off as an accident to claim the higher accidental insurance amount.” According to police, Mukesh had parked his motorcycle in a dark stretch near Lati Ghat that night. “He made his wife get down from the bike, removed his helmet, and hit her on the back of her head four to five times,” Dubey said. After killing her, he allegedly placed her body beside the motorcycle, dropped the vehicle to make it look like it had skidded, and lay down next to her and pretended to be unconscious when passersby arrived. Sewanti’s father, Mahavir, said he started suspecting Mukesh the very next day of the incident. He said his suspicion grew when Mukesh skipped his wife’s cremation. “He stayed at home and said he was not well, but he looked perfectly fine. That’s when we knew something was wrong,” he said. When Mahavir and some local residents revisited the site of the accident the next day, they found no signs of a crash. “No blood, no skid marks, the bike was untouched. It looked staged,” he said. On Tuesday, three days after the death, the people confronted Mukesh in the local school ground where he allegedly confessed. Police said that after the interrogation, Mukesh helped them recover the helmet used in the crime. “The helmet was hidden after the murder, and we recovered it based on his statement,” Dubey said. He also said that another angle involving a possible extramarital affair is also under investigation, though the main motive appears to be financial. “So far, the confession, medical reports, and recovered weapon all support that Mukesh killed his wife for the money. He was arrested today and sent to jail,” Dubey said.
