BHUBANESWAR: Three days after a 24-year-old pharmacist was arrested for allegedly killing his wife by forcibly injecting her with high dose anaesthesia, police on Saturday said the accused had pre-planned the murder as the victim used to threaten him of committing suicide if he did not take her back to his house. The duo had been living separately for the last six months.
The accused Pradyumna Kumar, husband of victim Subhashree Nayak (26) was arrested on Wednesday. Pradyumna worked as a pharmacist at a private hospital but had quit his job a few months back. His two female friends - Roji Patra and Ejita Bhuyan were also arrested for assisting him in the crime. Roji and Ejita were employed as record room and nursing staff respectively with separate hospitals in the city.
Police said Pradyumna and Subhashree had got married in 2020 after a love relationship. However, Subhashree was suspicious of Pradyumna having extra-marital affairs and they frequent fought over it.
He had compelled her to move to her parents’ house in BJB Nagar and she was staying there for the last six months. In the last few days, the couple had frequent arguments over phone during which Subhashree reportedly threatened him of ending her life if he did not take her back to his house.
Apprehensive of the repercussions in case Subhashree took the extreme step, Pradyumna told Roji and Ejita that his wife tortured him. Subsequently, the trio conspired to kill her, police sources said.
Since the accused had experience of working in hospitals and knowledge on medications, they planned to inject Subhashree with a high dose of anaesthesia so that she suffers from cardiac arrest and the trio could easily get away after committing the crime, they added.
Interestingly, police were startled to find out that Pradyumna was romantically involved with both Roji and Ejita. However, they were unaware of it and hence agreed to assist him in committing the crime. He gave an impression to Roji that Ejita was helping them to come together. He made similar claims before Ejita too.
“Initially during their questioning, Roji and Ejita defended Pradyumna. However, when we confronted Pradyumna with the two, they were taken by surprise and realised that he had been cheating on them. The duo then revealed the chilling details about the murder,” said Bharatpur police station IIC Deepak Khandayatray.