28 June,2010 09:53 AM IST | | Abhishek Anand
A week after the triple murder in Delhi, police still looking for weapons; accused's relatives under scanner
With the issue grabbing eyeballs, the police are going all out to unravel the suspected triple honour killings case that took place on June 20 in northwest Delhi. The three accused -Mandeep Nagar (22), Ankit Chaudhury (23) and Nakul Khari (21) - are in police custody till July 1 and are currently being interrogated as some crucial questions remain unanswered.
Murderers: Nakul, Ankit and Mandeep, prime accused in the Delhi triple
honour killings case. pic/Imtiyaz Khan
"We are trying to recover the weapon of offence as it is important evidence against the accused. We believe that they threw the firearm somewhere in the Ganges on the way to Rishikesh in Uttarakhand. We are sending a search party there. If the gun is found then we will match the bullets recovered from the victims' bodies", said a police officer.
The cops are also keeping a close tab on the family members of the accused and are probing the possibility of their involvement in the matter. But experts say the missing firearm could weaken the case considerably for the police. Earlier on Saturday, two relatives of the accused were released from jail. Dharambir Singh and Nitin Khari were arrested by the police because of their alleged fiery statements in the media to justify honour killing.
All the three accused were sent to police custody for 5 days by a Delhi court on June 26, when they were brought here from Dasna jail in Ghaziabad. The police are yet to arrest Rakesh Singh alias Shankee, the fourth suspect in the case. Rakesh allegedly helped the accused dispose off the weapon of offence (supposedly a .32 calibre country-made pistol).
According to the police Mandeep seems to be the mastermind in the case. The accused were on the run after allegedly killing Ankit's sister, Monica Gujjar Singh (24) and her husband Kuldeep (26) for marrying into a different caste, and Mandeep's 22-year-old sister, Shubha, who too had eloped with a man belonging to a
different caste.
More killings, this time in Haryana
Two girls, aged 14 and 12, were murdered allegedly by their grandmother and two uncles and their bodies thrown into a canal for having an "affair" with one of their relatives in yet another suspected case of 'honour' killings.
Police arrested the three suspects on Saturday after the bodies were recovered from the western Yamuna canal near Barwasni village in Haryana's Sonepat district on Friday.
The victims were identified as Chanchal (14) and her cousin Raj Kumari (12), both residents of Mohalla Kot in Sonepat City, police said. Those arrested are the grandmother of the girls, Vidya Devi, and their uncles Suraj and Chand, they said. Police claimed that the three accused had confessed to their crime.
They had told the police that both the girls had developed "illicit relations" with Vijay (16), Chanchal's step-brother who was also staying with Vidya Devi. Police believe that the trio had taken the step to "save the honour" of the family after the alleged affair of the girls came to light. The girls had been cautioned against developing any such relation but they did not pay any heed, the trio claimed. Enraged over their "behaviour", they took the victims in a car on June 25 after telling them that they will be going to the residence of Manoj, father of Raj Kumari, on Dewru village here, according to police.
However, they allegedly strangulated the girls to death and threw their bodies in the canal, police said. The bodies got stuck on the canal's embankment and were noticed by some residents, who informed the police.
Police said that Manoj had been working in Delhi while Chanchal's father Surender was currently lodged in the district jail at Sonepat. Surender had two wivesu00a0-- Sonia and Geeta and Vijay was the son of Sonia and Chanchal was Geeta's daughter. Vijay had come to Sonepat from Panchkula about a month ago.
