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Man held for killing wife and two minor children in West Delhi
Police officers associated with the case said Sahu told them that he had become insecure and was enraged with his wife, Preeti Gupta, as she often threatened to leave him and take along her children.
Three days after a man killed his wife and two children at their rented home in outer Delhi’s Shiv Ram Park near Nihal Vihar, police arrested the 39-year-old man on Tuesday from Paschim Vihar. Police said the man was living on the pavements posing as a homeless person in order to avoid arrest.
The man, Gagan Kumar Sahu, was planning to flee to Nepal, officials said.
Police officers associated with the case said Sahu told them that he had become insecure and was enraged with his wife, Preeti Gupta, as she often threatened to leave him and take along her children.
Police said two days before the murders, the couple had a fight and the woman had assaulted Sahu. Police said this left Sahu seething with anger.
“He planned to take revenge by killing his wife and children,” said a senior investigator, who did not want to be named.
On Saturday night, the investigator said, Sahu went to bed after dinner and pretended to sleep. “Sahu heard Preeti speaking on the phone, after which he took out a hammer and killed her,” the officer said.
Sahu first allegedly attacked his wife. When their two children, aged 9 and 7 years, woke up on hearing their mother’s screams, Sahu allegedly attacked them as well with the hammer, killing all three on the spot.
“He then washed his hands, changed his clothes, and hid the bloodstained hammer in the kitchen before leaving the house around midnight,” the officer said.
On Sunday, around 11.30am, Preeti’s father Ram Chandra Gupta, who lives in the same area, came to check on her as she was not answering his calls. Gupta found Preeti and the two children dead on the bed and their faces smashed in. He raised the alarm and alerted neighbours. The police were called and the three were shifted to a nearby hospital, where they were declared brought dead.
Gupta suspected his son-in-law’s role in the murders, as he was missing. A murder case was registered and the police sent a team to Sahu’s native home in Jamalpur, Bihar. Another team kept surveillance on Sahu’s relatives and friends to whom he might go for shelter.
“As we knew Sahu did not have money, we activated our intelligence network and we came to know that he had been seen at different places in outer Delhi. Our team searched and caught him sleeping on a pavement in Paschim Vihar area on Tuesday night,” the officer said.