Father, sibling held for murder of 19-year-old woman in Delhi’s Hari Nagar

Police arrested the father and brother of a 19-year-old woman found smothered to death, allegedly due to family opposition to her relationship.

NEW DELHI

A senior police officer said as per an initial probe, the woman was murdered on Tuesday night. (Representative photo)

The police on Friday arrested two family members, the father and brother, of a 19-year-old woman who was found to have been smothered to death, two days after the family tried to pass off her death as natural, officers said.

A senior police officer said as per an initial probe, the woman was murdered on Tuesday night.

“The woman was in a relationship with a relative and the family was against it. They had been opposing it for some time, but the woman told them she would elope with him. This appears to have been the trigger behind the killing on Tuesday night,” the officer said.

The case was brought to the police’s notice by a cousin of the victim’s boyfriend, the officer said, around 2pm on Wednesday, alleging that a woman was killed by her family and her remains were being taken for burial. A police team immediately took custody of the body and sent it for a post-mortem examination. On Thursday, a report from Deen Dayal Upadhyay Hospital revealed the cause of death as “smothering”, following which a murder case was registered at the Hari Nagar police station, deputy commissioner of police (west) Sharad Bhaskar said.

Police said that through Tuesday night, the woman’s parents and brother stayed with the body and on Wednesday morning, informed neighbours that she had died due to prolonged illness.

On Wednesday morning, around 9am, a neighbour, 65, said she saw the woman’s mother, father and brother standing outside the house. “Her mother started crying, and when I went downstairs, she said that her daughter was no more. She said her daughter was suffering from cancer, jaundice and kidney failure. We were shocked as she did not appear to be ill,” she said.

Neighbours said that the family conducted her last rites in their presence and took the body to a graveyard, when the police stopped them and took custody of the body.

Meanwhile, one of the victim’s cousins, who lives nearby, called her boyfriend in Bihar and informed him about her death. He then contacted his cousin in Delhi, who alerted the police, officers said.

Neighbours also alleged that the victim had been locked inside the house for four days.

“She was beaten by her family, and whenever I passed by, she asked me to somehow open the lock. Her family had put a large lock on the door and would leave for work every day. There was no way for me to open it,” the neighbour said.