Wife, her lover held for bludgeoning Faridabad man, faking rail death

Investigators allege the victim was killed with stones after being made to drink alcohol, before the body was placed on railway lines.

A 29-year-old woman and her 30-year-old partner were arrested on Sunday, cracking a two-month-old murder case in which a man’s mutilated body was found on railway tracks in Mewla Maharajpur and initially appeared to be an accident, officers said.

The accused were sent to four-day police remand after confessing, with an FIR registered under Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita provisions. (HT)

The accused were identified as Anjani Devi, 29, a resident of Godda in Jharkhand, and her boyfriend Mohammad Riyazul, 30, from Malda in West Bengal, police said. They were produced before a Faridabad court on Monday and sent on four-day police remand for interrogation.

The victim, Suman Jha, 36, was also from Godda and was married to Anjani Devi for 15 years, police said. The couple had two children and had been living in a rented accommodation in Mewla Maharajpur near Sector 46 in Faridabad for several years, they added.

Investigators said Riyazul lived in the same locality and worked in a private firm with Anjani. The two were allegedly in a relationship for the past three years, officers added. Police said Jha had discovered the relationship a few days before his murder. According to police, Jha’s body was recovered from railway tracks in Mewla Maharajpur on December 1. As his identity could not be established, the body was cremated three days later.

Police said that on the night of November 30, Anjani and Riyazul made Jha consume alcohol, took him near the railway tracks, and killed him by crushing his head with stones. The body was then placed on the tracks and was mutilated after being run over by multiple trains.

ACP (Crime) Varun Kumar Dahiya said Jha’s brother reached Faridabad with Anjani from Godda and filed a missing complaint at the Surajkund police station on January 18. “He was called at the Sector 46 police post and was shown photographs of various unidentified bodies and belongings recovered across Faridabad during the tenure when he finally identified one of them from the clothes it had. It was the one recovered from railway tracks in Mewla Maharajpur on December 1,” Dahiya said.

Dahiya said Sunny alleged that Jha had suspected his wife’s relationship with Riyazul before going missing. Crime branch officials said Anjani had returned to her maternal home in Godda during the same period and had not approached police, while call detail records showed she remained in contact with Riyazul before and after the murder.

The duo was detained on Sunday, interrogated for several hours, and later confessed to the crime, police said. An FIR under Section 103(1) (murder) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita was registered at Surajkund police station on Sunday on the complaint of the deceased’s brother.