Former navy cook arrested for killing wife, dismembering body in Gurugram

Police said the suspect was posted in Visakhapatnam and took voluntary retirement in 2021. Investigators said on the morning of April 21, police recovered a burnt torso from an abandoned room near Panchgaon Chowk on NH-48. With very little to go on, police could not identify the victim nor find any clue on the killer

A retired cook of the Indian Navy was arrested on charges of killing his wife, dismembering the body and burning the parts, before dumping them at different locations in Gurugram, police said on Friday.

Soniya Sharma during happier times. (Sourced)

Investigators said the suspect, identified by his first name as Jitender, 37, was arrested from near Manesar bus stand on April 26 and is in police remand for questioning till Saturday.

Police said the suspect was posted in Visakhapatnam and took voluntary retirement in 2021.

Investigators said on the morning of April 21, police recovered a burnt torso from an abandoned room near Panchgaon Chowk on NH-48. With very little to go on, police could not identify the victim nor find any clue on the killer.

The investigation into the murder, a blind case at that point, began, said Vijay Partap Singh, deputy commissioner of police (crime) .

The DCP said on April 23, commuters on the Dwarka Expressway alerted the police about human remains scattered on the road.

“Stray dogs had dragged severed legs from the nearby bushes and left them on the road. We soon found that the legs matched the unidentified torso. It was only after Jitender’s arrest that we managed to recover the head and clothes. But the murder weapon and arms are yet to be found,” Singh said.

Using a plastic bag found in the room from where the torso was recovered, police identified the victim as Soniya Sharma, 29, the second wife of Jitender, who is a cancer survivor.

“The plastic bag had a seal on it which showed that it was manufactured in Visakhapatnam. Its manufacturer told police that the plastic bags were manufactured only for the Indian Navy. We kept going through missing person complaints of at least 40 persons and stumbled upon a woman reported missing from Manesar whose husband, Jitender, we came to know during background checks, was a retired navy cook, whose last posting was Visakhapatnam,” said the DCP.

Police said they started gathering his movement details and found that he was present near all the spots from where the body parts were recovered. Jitender was finally arrested after police got concrete evidence against him.

Terming the murder “well planned and cold-blooded”, DCP Singh said Jitender killed Sonia after approaching her from behind while she was busy with daily chores in the kitchen around 7am on April 21.

“Jitender legally separated from his first wife almost a decade ago and then married Sonia. Everything was okay with the couple until 2018, when he met a woman from Bihar during a train journey from Visakhapatnam to Delhi,” he said.

Singh said soon, the two got close and the woman gave birth to a boy in 2019 after getting settled in Hazaribagh, Jharkhand.

“Sonia came to know about this illicit relation after seeing the mother and child’s pictures on Jitender’s mobile phone,” DCP Singh said.

He said Jitender was angry when confronted by Soniya and soon quarrels between them became frequent. Police believe that it was during this time that Jitender started planning to kill Sonia in such a way that no evidence was left.

Investigators said the suspect hails from Kherla in Sohna but was living at a rented accommodation in Manesar as his daughter was studying in class 5, at the Kendriya Vidyalaya on the NSG Manesar campus.

Police said on the morning of April 21, he waited till their 10-year-old daughter left home for school around 6.45am before allegedly killing his wife.

“As soon as she left, the suspect set his plan in motion. After throttling Soniya, he dragged her body into the bathroom. There, he used a chopping knife and a kitchen pestle to dismember all the limbs and the head meticulously. He packed them in a backpack and a trolley bag, loaded them on to his motorcycle and left to throw them away,” he said.

Investigators said Jitender dumped the torso in an abandoned room near Panchgaon Chowk on NH-48 and set it on fire after pouring two bottles of perfume on it.

They said he then dumped the head in a pond filled with drain water along the KMP expressway; the hands, murder weapons and clothes in the hills of Manesar; and the legs along the Dwarka Expressway.

DCP said the suspect is presently on three-day police remand for detailed interrogation and several pieces of information are yet to be gathered. He also said samples of the recovered body parts will be sent for DNA analysis.

He said the suspect’s parental residence is in Gandhi Nagar in Sector 11 from where the bloodstained trolley bag, backpack and the motorcycle which he used in dispersing the body parts were recovered.

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