British police fly to India in hunt for Harshita Brella’s accused killer husband

British police officers have reached India to hunt for Pankaj Lamba, the Indian national accused of murdering his wife Harshita Brella in the UK last year.

Published on: Nov 10, 2025, 09:47:05 IST

By Sanya Jain

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British police officers have reached India to hunt for Pankaj Lamba, the Indian national accused of murdering his wife Harshita Brella in the UK last year.

Photo issued by Northamptonshire Police of Harshita Brella (Northamptonshire Police/PA)

Harshita Brella, 24, was found in the boot of a car in Brisbane Road, Ilford, east London, on November 14, 2024. Her husband Pankaj Lamba is the prime suspect in her murder.

Last week, nearly a year after her murder, detectives from the British police flew to India to hunt down the fugitive accused, The Mirror reported.

Harshita Brella murder case

According to the BBC, Harshita was strangled to death on November 10. Her body was driven to Ilford in east London, where it was discovered four days later.

Her family had known for some time that Harshita was facing domestic abuse. "He [Pankaj] was making her life miserable,” her mother told BBC. "She said I will not go back to him. He will kill me."

(Also read: ‘My sister was brutally murdered by her husband’: Harshita Brella’s sibling pleads for justice)

Harshita and Pankaj, both Indian nationals, married in August 2023 in India and moved to the UK a few months later. Her family claims that Pankaj started abusing her over dowry demands soon afterwards.

Police believe that Pankaj flew back to India soon after murdering his wife. In March 2025, he was caught on camera at a bank in Gurgaon.

What UK police said

“As we remember Harshita Brella on the first anniversary of her death, our thoughts very much remain with her family and all who loved her,” Det Supt Johnny Campbell said in a statement released on Tuesday.

“Northamptonshire Police has provided family liaison support to Harshita’s family throughout the past year and in July, I was privileged to travel to India to meet with family members and return the personal belongings of their much loved and much missed daughter and sister,” Campbell said.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sanya Jain
Sanya Jain is an Assistant Editor with Hindustan Times Digital. She has nearly a decade of experience in covering offbeat stories that speak to the everyday experience - from viral videos to human interest copies that spark conversation. Her interests stretch across business, pop culture, social media trends, entertainment and global affairs. Before joining Hindustan Times, Sanya spent two years with Moneycontrol and five years with NDTV. She holds an undergraduate degree in English literature from St Stephen’s College, Delhi, and a master’s in journalism from the Xavier Institute of Communications, Mumbai. Sanya has a sharp eye for spotting emerging trends and looking for newsworthy angles to elevate viral posts into meaningful narratives. She was the first one, for example, to cover Narayana Murthy’s remark on 70-hour work weeks that sparked a national conversation. She is equally at ease writing about business leaders as about the common man, about issues of national importance and memes that amuse social media. Sanya enjoys speaking with content creators, newsmakers and entrepreneurs to transform everyday moments into engaging, slice-of-life stories that resonate with readers. When she is not working, Sanya can be found curled up with a good book. Born and raised in Lucknow, she has spent the last several years in Delhi. She is deeply interested in animal welfare and now spends a lot of her time running after her destructive orange cat.Read More

Murder Case

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