Rohit’s wife taken home to recreate scene of murder

A day after claiming to have solved the murder of Rohit Shekhar Tiwari with the arrest of his wife, police Thursday visited the victim’s Defence Colony house to recreate the sequence of events that allegedly led to the murder.

Investigators took Shekhar’s wife Apoorva, who is in their custody, to the house and recreated the crime scene in Shekhar’s room by involving her in the process. “We carried out the exercise to recreate the exact scenario that led to Shekhar’s death,” said a senior police officer associated with the case.

On Tuesday night, police had arrested Apoorva for allegedly “strangling and smothering” her husband to death while he was in an inebriated state after she “ran out of stories” and confessed to her crime, police said.

The immediate trigger for the murder, police maintained, was Shekhar’s taunt to Apoorva with a story of how he and a woman relative of his had travelled in the same car and drank alcohol from the same glass hours before on a drive to Delhi from Uttarakhand, where he had gone to caste his franchise.

Shekhar’s body was discovered by his domestic help, Golu, on April 16 — almost 17 hours after he returned to Delhi and went to sleep in his first floor bedroom after dinner.

After being produced in court Wednesday, Apoorva was sent to police remand for two days as the police had informed a Delhi court that they wanted her custody to recreate the crime scene and interrogate her to ascertain if anybody else was involved Shekhar’s murder or had helped her execute the crime.

An investigator, who is not authorised to speak to the media, said they confronted Apoorva and the three domestic help of the house to ascertain their role in the crime. All three were present in the house when Shekhar was murdered.

“The four—the three domestic helps and Apoorva—were first questioned separately. Then they were made to sit together and were confronted with each other’s statement. The exercise helped us rule out the role of all other occupants of the house. We have now established that Apoorva killed her husband alone,” the investigator said.

Apoorva will be produced before the court Friday afternoon. It is unlikely that the investigating team would seek her custody further, said the officer.

First Published: Apr 26, 2019 05:00 IST