Woman, lover held for killing husband in Bareilly, staging it as suicide
According to police, the woman confessed to lacing her husband’s tea with rat poison. She then called her lover, a resident of Bijnor, and together they strangled her husband to death before hanging the body to mislead authorities.
Close on the heels of two recent incidents in Meerut, where women reportedly orchestrated the murder of their husbands in collusion with their lovers and then tried to cover up the crime, a 25-year-old woman, Rekha, along with her lover Pintu, was arrested in Bareilly for allegedly poisoning and strangulating her husband and staging it as death by suicide.
The victim was identified as Kehr Pal Singh (35). The gruesome incident unfolded in the Thakurdwara locality of Bareilly on April 13, police said on Friday.
According to the police, Rekha confessed to lacing her husband’s tea with rat poison. She then called Pintu, a resident of Bijnor, and together they strangled Singh to death before hanging the body to mislead authorities. Pintu fled the scene, while Rekha bolted the door of the room from inside and began crying. Neighbours, alerted by her screams, peeped through a window and found the body of her husband hanging at around 5pm. They later informed police.
Additional superintendent of police (ASP), north, Mukesh Chandra Mishra, said: “The postmortem report clearly cites death by strangulation even though the locked room suggested suicide. Doctors have preserved the viscera for forensic testing to confirm poisoning.”
During questioning, Rekha initially avoided direct answers but later confessed to poisoning her husband. However, she denied strangling him or hanging the body, claiming her husband might have locked the room and taken his own life, police said. The case came to the fore following a complaint by the victim’s elder brother, Ashok Kumar, who suspected foul play. Ashok revealed that Kehr Pal Singh, married to Rekha for 16 years, had four children. He alleged that Rekha, employed as a cook at a medical college, had an affair with Pintu, which Singh discovered. It led to frequent arguments, culminating in the deadly conspiracy, he added.
A murder case has been registered against Rekha and Pintu at the Fatehganj Pashchimi police station. Police are still investigating how the room was locked from inside, while forensic results are pending. Both accused were medically examined and sent to jail on Friday, the SP said.
A resident of Aliganj area in Bareilly district, Kehr Pal Singh was a sanitation worker employed on contract with the Fatehganj Pashchimi town council. His body was found hanging from a noose in a room at his rented home on April 13.
Last month, a woman named Muskan Rastogi, along with her lover Sahil Shukla, was accused of killing her husband Saurabh, dismembering his body, and sealing it in a drum filled with cement.
In another case which came to the fore on Thursday (April 17), a 25-year-old man from Akbarpur Saadat village in Meerut was found murdered even as his wife and her lover planted a venomous snake on his bed to make it appear like a snakebite death. However, a post-mortem examination revealed that Amit died of asphyxiation, and not snakebite.
