Man arrested for killing two relatives with dumbbell in Palam Vihar

A day after a woman and her son were found murdered in their home in southwest Delhi’s Palam area, the police on Wednesday arrested the woman’s nephew for the crime

A day after a woman and her son were found murdered in their home in southwest Delhi’s Palam area, the police on Wednesday arrested the woman’s nephew for the crime.

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Police said the accused, Abhishek Verma (33), a resident of northwest Delhi’s Burari, allegedly killed his aunt Babita Verma (52) and her son Gaurav (27) at their home on Tuesday evening. Police said that in order to evade suspicion, Abhishek was present during the post-mortem of the bodies, and was detained from outside the mortuary.

“ Verma alleged his aunt used to taunt and mentally torture him and his family to return ₹50,000 that they had taken for his sister’s marriage in 2019,” said deputy commissioner of police (southwest) Ingit Pratap Singh.

Babita’s husband Krishan Swaroop (55), who works as an accountant with the Indian Air Force at Palam, was not home at the time of the incident. He informed the Palam village police station about the murders after he found his wife and son lying in a pool of blood.

After registering an FIR, a police team started scanning the CCTV footage of the area and found a man leaving Babita’s house in an e-rickshaw, wearing blood-stained clothes. “Around 12pm on Wednesday, the police team traced the e-rickshaw, which the suspect had taken to leave from the woman’s house. The driver of the e-rickshaw said he had dropped a person, who had blood stains on his face and clothes, near Dashratpuri metro station,” said the DCP.

“The driver told police that he had refused to accept the soiled currency notes that the suspect gave him, following which he was paid ₹30 using a mobile payment application. The account linked to the payment was traced to Verma,” said a senior police officer.

Police said Verma had visited his aunt’s house on Sunday when an argument broke out over money. “On Tuesday, he went to their house with the intention of killing both the mother and the son. He reached Dashratpuri metro station on a two-wheeler, took an e-rickshaw from there and went to his aunt’s house. He was even carrying extra clothes with him. After killing them, he took the DVR attached to the CCTV camera and fled. When he was coming downstairs, he left open the cupboard open to give an impression that it was a robbery,” Singh said.

“Babita kept on pestering and verbally abused Abhishek who, in a fit of rage, killed her. Later, he killed Gaurav as he had seen him killing his mother. Both of them were bludgeoned to death with dumbbells,” said Singh.

The family lived in a three-storey bungalow and an army hawaldar lived on the ground floor.