NEW DELHI: Six months after a social activist and local communist
leader from Bawana in north Delhi went missing under mysterious
circumstances, the crime branch has disclosed that he was murdered by
his wife and her brothers-in-law.
The cops have recovered the skeleton and other remnants of Ramcharan
Ram (60) and arrested his wife Janki Devi (45) and her brother-in-law
Vinod Kumar (35). Cops are still looking for another accused, Jhagru,
who is also Janki's brother-in-law. Vinod and Jhagru are self styled
godmen.
Janki was afraid of losing the property as Ram was having an affair,
police said, adding that her brothers-in-law were enraged after the
leader brutally thrashed his wife.
The case was cracked after the special operation squad (SOS) of crime
branch received a tip-off that the missing leader may have been
murdered and buried by his wife and brothers-in-law. The informer said
that the accused were trying to flee to Bihar. "Immediately, a team
led by ACP Suresh Kaushik and inspector Ashok Kumar was formed to
arrest the accused," said additional CP Ravindra Yadav said.
The SOS team apprehended Janki and Vinod, who were packing their bags,
from their house in Bawana. During questioning, both tried to mislead
the police team but broke down under sustained interrogation and
confessed to have murdered Ram.
The accused revealed that Ram sold one of his houses for around Rs 7
lakh and purchased another house for Rs 4 lakh. Janki said Ram had
developed an illicit relation with a woman in the area and had spent
the remaining amount received from the sale of the house on her.
This led to frequent quarrels between the couple and Ram often beat
her up, Janki claimed. They had a big fight when Janki caught him
trying to take away property documents of the house with intentions of
transferring it on the woman's name.
In December 2012, she shared her problem with Vinod and Jhagru, who
assured to help her. For two weeks before the murder, the accused held
Ram captive in a room on the first floor of his house. They told the
neighbours that he had gone to his native village.
On the New Year's Eve, they made Ram consume a lot of alcohol but he
did not get drunk enough. The next day, they made him drink more
alcohol until he was extremely inebriated and then Jhagru smothered
Ram with a pillow while Vinod and Janki pinned down his hands, police
said.
That night, they could not dispose of the body. Next evening, when
there was dense fog, they put the body in a gunny bag and took it to a
nearby isolated field and buried it in a pit. Yadav said they had
recovered the skeleton and remnants of the body on the instance of the
accused with the help of a mobile crime team and forensic experts.