Preeti, and her father's photo outside police station

After Hardeepkumar Kumri (26), a welder and Mumbra resident confessed to killing his wife Preeti as he did not like her on January 16, the police are still looking into possibilities as to what aggravated Kumri into murdering his wife. Preeti's parents are pointing out a dowry angle to the murder.

Preeti (20) was married to Kumri two and a half years ago. Within four months of the marriage, the couple's relationship was strained and Preeti went back to live with her father. "They told us that she doesn't know how to cook and started demanding Rs 1 lakh and a room at Bhayanderu00a0for Kumri's business. On October 31 they took her away from our house back to Kumri's Antop Hill residence," said Preeti's father Ramesh Ramdani Verma, a furniture seller who stays at Bhayander.

Verma reveals that Kumri's mother came to their Bhayander residence on January 3 stating that Preeti had run away from her husband's house. After an intense search, Hardeepkumar's brother, Ranjit, a fruit seller from King Circle filed a police complaint.u00a0 "I had asked Ranjit to offer alcohol to Hardeep because I had this feeling that he was hiding something. They went out to drink and during that time Hardeep confessed saying, I didn't like my wife and so I murdered her. The next day the police arrested him after this confession," said Verma

On January 3, Hardeepkumar and his brother-in-law Sanjay Patel, a welder also took Preeti for a movie in Mumbra, and then to a cousin's unoccupied flat at Reay Road. At 2 am when Preeti was sleeping, Hardeepkumar and Patel allegedly murdered her, say the police. "They stuffed her body in a gunny bag and dumped it into a creek in Mumbra. We have arrested both Kumri and Patel," said Vishnu Devkar, senior inspector, Antop Hill.

However even after the killer's confession, Preeti's family has no body to perform last rites on. Her father waits patiently until the body is recovered. The police say this will be difficult, as many days have lapsed. However they say they are still on the lookout for the body. "We live in Bhayander but keep going to the Antop Hill police station around four times a day. We want to find her body. We are all distressed," said an aggrieved Verma.

Raviraj Verma, Preeti's cousin said, "While on the trail, we met a few local people of Mumbra who said that they found a woman's body five days ago under a bridge. They also said that the police took the body. However, the police said that there were no records of such a body being found in either Thane or Mumbra police station."

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