Man arrested for murder of ‘lover’

Times News Network
Ludhiana: After the half naked body of a woman was found at a secluded place in a village in Malaud, Khanna, police arrested her alleged lover for the murder. The arrested accused has been identified as 45-year-old Bablu Yadav of Araria district in Bihar, now a resident of Siar, Malaud. The deceased has been identified as Satpal Kaur (45).
The complainant, Gulraj Singh of Patti Begampura, Siar, told the police that the accused lived in the house of Jasvir Singh for about 30 to 32 years. He added that Jasvir evicted him about three to four months ago.
The complainant said that on Thursday evening, at around 7.15pm, his wife had gone to a house in Lodhi Patti for work. She did not return till 8.30pm and he left home to look for her. He also called sarpanch Pargat Singh. Satpal Kaur’s half naked body was found with injury marks on the left side of her mouth, which was bleeding.
During investigation, it came to fore that the accused and deceased worked at Jasvir’s house and had an affair. When Jasvir came to know about it, he fired them. A case was filed under Section 103 (1) of BNS (Murder) at Malaud police station. Police parties conducted raids and arrested the accused at around 3am on Friday while he was trying to escape to his native state.
Preliminary investigations suggest that it was crime of passion, said Khanna SSP Ashwini Gotyal. On being asked if police was ruling out the possibility of rape, she said that prima facie, it did not seem to be a case of sexual assault but this could only be said with certainty after receipt of the postmortem report.
During initial questioning, the accused said that the deceased had started blackmailing him and had already taken more than Rs 1.25 lakh from him. However, she was demanding more money and even threatened to get a case of rape registered against him if he did not comply.
Angered by this, the accused strangled her to death and hit her face with a piece of wood. They said that they had retrieved the wooden block and the shirt worn by the accused while committing the crime.