Meerut (Uttar Pradesh): A man connived with a doctor to kill his wife, a government school teacher. This was done so that the man could claim an insurance amount of Rs 50 lakh. The man and the doctor gave the woman sleeping pills. Then when she was fast asleep they smothered her to death with a pillow. Then they stored the body in a freezer for a day.
However, luck was not on their side. An image of the doctor choking the man’s wife with a pillow has now sent the duo behind the bars. The image was apparently clicked by the man himself.
According to the police, the incident took place February 20 here. Sanjay Luthra, 42, a businessman, had hatched a plot to eliminate his wife Chanda, 40. He connived with a doctor named Rajat Bhardwaj who owed Rs 1.35 lakh to Luthra. The latter allegedly agreed to waive off the debt if Bhardwaj killed his wife.
Inspector Ram Sanjeevan of Crime Branch and his team investigated the case and cracked it. “Though the two were given a clean chit by the local Nauchandi Thana, we continued the probe. We took custody of Sanjay Luthra’s mobile phone and recovered a few deleted pictures. One of the pictures showed a woman being smothered with a pillow,” Sanjeevan said.
“During questioning, it came to light that Luthra had actually shot the photograph of Bhardwaj smothering his wife. He deleted it when the doctor confronted him,” the police official added.
Meanwhile, Chanda’s family had sensed foul play since the beginning. Her mother Sunita Devi said, “Luthra was trying to get rid of Chanda for some time and had even taken the divorce route. But Chanda did not agree to the divorce. She had visited a relative at 11.00pm Saturday, and was killed on the same night. We tried to convince police at Nauchandi, but they failed to take any action.”
The post mortem report of the victim came as ‘inconclusive’. But that did not help Luthra and his doctor escape the clutches of the law.