New Delhi: A 21-year-old Delhi University student was allegedly killed by her lover, who burnt and hid the victim’s body in the ventilation shaft of his house for five days and married another woman during that period, spending his wedding night in the adjacent room.
After the semi-decomposed body of Arzoo Singh was recovered, the accused Naveen Khatri, 23, was arrested on Sunday night.
He allegedly strangled Singh, who lived in the same neighbourhood, last Tuesday and dumped her body in the shaft of his four-storey home at Rajpura near Model Town. Khatri later got married to another woman on Thursday, police said.
Family sources say Khatri and Singh had planned to get married, but both families objected to the idea four months ago, as the two hailed from the same village.
However, the pair kept meeting secretly.
Lately Singh was reportedly having fights with Khatri after his marriage was fixed elsewhere. This had probably let to an argument during which Khatri had murdered Singh, investigators believe.
Singh, a third-year student of Laxmi Bai College of Delhi University, had left for college in the morning of February 2.
The search for her began after she failed to return by evening.
On February 4, Khatri was to get married to another girl, after he had murdered Singh and dumped her body.
“We came to know that Naveen used to meet her regularly even after the families’ disagreement. He thought that my sister will create problems during the wedding and murdered her to remove hindrances,” Singh’s sister Payal told Gulf News.
After preliminary investigation and Singh’s relatives constantly raising suspicion over Khatri’s family, police questioned the accused and he confessed to the crime. The police are also probing the role of other members of the Khatri family in the incident.
During questioning, Khatri told the police he never intended to murder Singh, and confessed that “it all happened in a fit of rage.”
He told the police that she kept threatening to blow the lid and tell his family members about their secret meetings.
He said she threatened to come to the wedding venue on the day of his marriage and create a scene.
“He said Arzoo got very hostile and started to slap and punch him while he was driving the car and as a reaction he punched her face and then strangled her using her dupatta [scarf],” Vijay Singh, Deputy Commissioner of Police, Northwest, told Gulf News.
It is believed that Khatri then informed his father Raj Kumar, who is allegedly involved in a case of murder reported in 2006 and recently came out on parole, about the killing and he suggested that he take the body home.
Raj Kumar has been missing since the incident.
During interrogation, it also came to light that Khatri tried to dump Singh’s body somewhere else and also attempted to cremate it once, but failed, after which he threw it in the shaft of his house.
“A case of murder has been registered and the accused has been arrested. Further investigation is underway. It is suspected that others in the family had knowledge of the crime. We are trying to trace Raj Kumar who is still missing. It is unclear if he had a role in helping Naveen dump the body in the shaft. However, we suspect that he was aware of the murder. Our teams are looking for him,” Singh added.
