India: Wife found guilty of killing husband 9 years after his death

Delhi: Police have arrested two people including the main accused in connection with a nine-year-old brutal murder, in which a man was murdered and his remains were cut into pieces and spread over a large stretch of road to misguide investigation.

The killing occurred in 2011. Now, Delhi police's Crime Branch has found that the victim's wife, Shakuntala, and her lover, Kamal, had hatched the murder conspiracy. They had executed the plan with help of a driver.

Addressing a press briefing on Monday, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime Branch) Joy Tirkey revealed that  Kamal and Shakuntala planned Ravi's assasination in 2011.

The case

In 2012, when polygraph tests - also called lie detector tests; they asses lies on the basis of several physiological indicators - turned up inconclusive, police were stumped.

A breakthrough came years later, in 2017, after conducting a brain mapping test on Kamal.

"[The] main accused, Kamal, had a relationship with Shakuntala. In 2011, her marriage was fixed with a man called Ravi. She remained in contact with Kamal after the marriage. A month into the marriage, [they] both hatched a conspiracy to kill Ravi," the DCP said.

Kamal, police found, had bribed a driver with Rs70,000 (Dh3,620) to be a part of the plan. 

The plan

"As per plan, Shakuntala made a plan of visiting her sister's place along with her husband and invited her lover, Kamal, to join them. They hailed the cab of the driver who was part of their plan and executed the murder during the journey", DCP Tirkey said.

A police complaint was registered by the father of the victim in 2011 and the case was transferred to the Delhi Police Crime Branch.

"The case completely changed in 2017 when we conducted a brain mapping test of main accused Kamal and the driver. After confessing to murder in the brain mapping test, both Kamal and Shankutla absconded from home but Kamal was caught from Alwar," he added.

How they hid the body

After interrogation, Kamal confessed that they initially buried the body in a pit at a construction site but then dug it up and threw pieces of his body on the stretch of road from Alwar to Rewari, police said.

Police have recovered 25 pieces of bone from the construction site where Ravi was originally buried.

Shakuntala, now pregnant, is still at large, say police.