NEW DELHI: Yet another gut-wrenching murder case akin to the Shraddha Walkar shocker has surfaced from the Pandav Nagar area of east Delhi. The police said on Monday that a 48-year-old man was allegedly murdered and chopped with the body parts tossed around an abandoned place in the city.
The victim has been identified by cops as Anjan Das. The accused are the victim’s 48-year-old wife, identified as Poonam Devi, and 25-year-old stepson Deepak. Special CP (Crime) Ravinder Singh Yadav said the incident went back to June 5 this year. The east district police over three days recovered severed body parts — two legs cut into four pieces, a head and hands.
The face of the corpse could not be identified due to decomposition, Yadav said, adding that like the Shraddha case, some of the victim’s body parts were stored inside a fridge. A police patrolling team noticed a foul smell coming from near the bushes in the Ramlila grounds, in front of 20 Block, Kalyanpuri in the area of Pandav Nagar police station.
WATCH |
“It appeared that after brutally killing a person and slicing the body into pieces with a sharp weapon, the accused disposed of the body parts at Ramlila ground to destroy the evidence,” said the police officer.
The police in June registered an FIR under IPC Section 302 (murder) and 201 (causing disappearance of evidence). However, even after six months of investigation, the case remained unsolved.
Post Walkar case, the south district police contacted their east district counterpart, drawing a possible conclusion that the body parts found from Ramlila ground could be of Shraddha’s as she was murdered 17 days before the recovery of her parts on May 18. The case was then probed by Crime Branch.
In a couple of days, a police team ruled out any link with Shraddha case as the body parts found from Pandav Nagar, east Delhi, prima facie, belonged to a man. The Crime Branch team then began examining records of all missing persons of the area. “The breakthrough came when we found that a person had been missing since the incident, but there was no missing report in the case.
The victim’s name came up: Anjan Das,” DCP (Crime Branch) Amit Goel told this newspaper. The cops then traced the address to Trilokpuri and found out that his family members -- Poonam Devi and Deepak – lived there. “After scientific interrogation, they revealed the horrific details of the crime,” Goel added.
Wife, son arrested
Two accused — the victim’s wife and stepson — have been arrested. They plotted to kill Anjan Das as he sought sexual relations from his wife’s divorced daughter and daughter-in-law and allegedly tried to rape one of them, police said.