New Delhi: Suspecting his wife of infidelity, a man killed her and, with the help of three friends, buried her body in a graveyard in south Delhi’s Mehrauli. The case was solved after a missing person complaint filed by the woman’s friend led to the arrest of the husband and two accomplices.The three arrested were the husband, Shabab Ali, 47, and his friends Shahrukh Khan, 28, and Tanveer, 25.The woman’s friend filed the missing person report on Aug 10, suspecting that Ali had unlawfully confined her. After a case was registered, a police team reached Ali’s residence and found him and his two children absent. However, a team formed by Ankit Chauhan, DCP (South), under Sanjay Kumar Singh, SHO (Mehrauli), apprehended Ali when he arrived to collect his belongings.Ali told the cops that on July 25, he discovered chats and videos involving his wife that enraged him and triggered an argument. He then plotted her murder. On July 27, he asked her to go shopping with him to Daryaganj in central Delhi with their two children, an 11-year-old daughter and a five-year-old son.He planned to drug her with sleeping pills. He asked Khan to accompany them to Daryaganj, where they had lunch. However, he failed to slip the pills into her food there. On the way back, when one of the children requested tea, he took the opportunity to mix sedatives into the drink.When the woman became drowsy, Ali took her to an unoccupied house in Dera Mandi, south Delhi, where he worked as a painter. He placed the children in one room and his wife in another. Pretending to give her medicine, he gave her weedicide. He told police he intended her death to look like suicide.The woman did not die immediately and developed facial rashes. A panicky Ali contacted a friend who worked as a compounder to treat the rashes, concerned that such marks might raise questions. From July 27 to Aug 1, he kept her confined there. When the property owner was due to return, he moved the woman and children to his house in Mehrauli.A police officer said, “Ali also attempted to strangle her when she did not die.” She ultimately died on Aug 2. Shabab enlisted Tanveer’s help to find a burial site. The four men — Ali, Khan, Tanveer and the compounder — drove to a graveyard in Chandanholla and discreetly buried the body in a corner on Aug 3.CCTV footage helped police crack the case. To mislead investigators, Ali sent a message to her friend, the complainant, on July 27 from Amroha, claiming his wife was deserting him to marry someone else. However, after a long period without contact, the complainant visited the house and, after questioning the children, who said they had no knowledge of their mother’s whereabouts, filed the missing person report.The other two arrested worked as a painter and an electrician. “We are tracking the compounder. The car used in the crime has been recovered,” the officer said.
