Childhood sweetheart kills man's wife and stages it as suicide

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New Delhi: The childhood sweetheart of an engineer allegedly killed his wife after hatching a plan with him and staged it as a suicide in southwest Delhi's Kishangarh, police said Friday. The accused, Rahul Kumar Mishra (32) and Padma Tiwari (33), were arrested on Wednesday, they said. On March 16, Kishangarh police station was informed by Fortis Hospital that one Pooja Rai was brought to the hospital by her husband and she was declared dead there, police said. As Pooja died within seven years of marriage, the Mehrauli executive magistrate was informed and proceedings were initiated. Her father's statement was recorded and a probe initiated to ascertain the cause of death, Deputy Commissioner of Police (southwest) Devender Arya said.

The autopsy report termed the cause of death as homicidal after which a case was registered. Her husband, other family members and his friend Padma, who was said to have visited Rai on the day of her death, were kept on technical surveillance, he said. On Wednesday, the accused were interrogated and confronted with the discrepancies in their statements. During inquiry, it was revealed that the childhood lovers had hatched the conspiracy to eliminate Pooja in order to re-unite, he added. Padma and Rahul had studied together in Sindri Dhanbad, Jharkhand from KG to class 12 and were very close friends. Thereafter, they parted ways to pursue higher education and didn't keep in touch, the DCP said. In April 2015, Padma was added to a WhatsApp group of their school of which Rahul was also a member. She contacted him and with the passage of time, their love rekindled and they entered into a relationship. Their relationship hit a brick wall when their families did not agree to their marriage, he said.

They tried to persuade their families to no avail. In January 2017, Rahul's marriage was fixed with Pooja, who also belonged to Sindri, Jharkhand, he added. Rahul told Pooja about their relationship with the hope that she would refuse to get married to him but she didn't. He married her on April 23, 2017. Meanwhile, Rahul and Padma continued their relationship and later they hatched a plan to kill Pooja, the officer said. On the day of the killing, Padma went to meet Pooja at her house in Kishangarh as per plan. They had breakfast together, but Padma had to wait to execute the plan as the domestic help was still present there, he said. Later, Padma overpowered Pooja and hit her head on the ground several times and smothered her. Then, she kept a letter close to the body to mislead the police. In the evening, she told Rahul on phone that she had murdered Pooja, police said.

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