Delhi honour killing: Pistol used by accused recovered

Making a headway in the Ashok Vihar honour killing case, Delhi Police have recovered from Rishikesh the pistol allegedly used by three youths to kill three of their relatives for marrying outside their caste.

Making a headway in the Ashok Vihar honour killing case, Delhi Police have recovered from Rishikesh the pistol allegedly used by three youths to kill three of their relatives for marrying outside their caste.

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A team of city police recovered the .32 bore pistol from Rishikesh where they had taken the accused -- Ankit, Mandeep and Nakul -- for further investigation in the case. The trio were arrested from Ghaziabad on June 24.

"We have recovered the pistol from river Ganga. The accused told us that they have thrown the pistol in the river. We searched the location with the help of locals. The water was shallow and we recovered it," Deputy Commissioner of Police (North-West) N S Bundela said.

The pistol will be sent for forensic examination, he said.

The accused had told police that they had thrown the pistol in the river after killing Ankit's sister Monica and her husband Kuldeep for marrying outside the community. Later, they allegedly killed Shobha, Mandeep's sister, who had earlier eloped with a person outside her community.

They carried out the murders on a single day -- June 20. First they allegedly killed Shobha after asking her to meet them. Then they called Kuldeep to meet them and killed him. Later his wife Monica was murdered at her home.

After the murders, the three escaped to Uttarakhand.

Investigators have collected evidence through which they are reconstructing the chain of events, a senior police official said.

They have also taken the fingerprints of the accused to match them with those lifted from the house of Monica as well as that in Shobha's car.

Police is also examining the phone records to establish the movement of the three accused before and after the murders.

During interrogation, the official said, the trio had confessed to killing their sisters and a brother-in-law as they had "sullied" the family name.

The youths said that the villagers had insulted them by pointing out that their sisters had married outside the caste and they could not take the humiliation, the official said.