Gorakhpur (UP): The Uttar Pradesh STF arrested Dr Dharmendra Pratap Singh, a well-known surgeon of Gorakhpur, on charges of murdering his former wife Rajeswari Srivastava alias Rakhi Srivastava seven months ago and keeping her alive in the virtual world to make acquaintances believe that she was residing in Assam.
The sensational matter came to the fore when a UP special task force (STF) arrested Dr Singh Friday from Gorakhpur. According to sources in the STF, the doctor killed Rakhi by pushing her off a hill in Pokhara, Nepal, June 3 last year. The accused was entangled in a triangular love affair involving Rakhi and his present wife and wanted to get rid of the former. The motive behind keeping Rakhi alive on social media, the sources said, was that no one would be suspicious about the woman’s absence and eventually the case would die down.
Rajeshwari alias Raki, a resident of Shahpur area in Uttar Pradesh, went missing mysteriously June 2018. Rakhi’s brother Amar Prakash Srivastava lodged a case with Shahpur police June 24 under Sections 366 and 506 IPC alleging that his sister was abducted by her second husband Manish Sinha, a resident of Lohgara under Wazirganj police limits in Bihar. Acting on the complaint, Shahpur police arrested Manish for interrogation.
As the police were unable to trace the whereabouts of Rakhi, the case was handed over to a STF. During their probe, it was revealed that Rakhi accompanied Manish to Nepal June 1, but while Manish returned to Gaya on June 3, Rakhi stayed back.
Meanwhile, the STF also brought Dr Singh under the purview of their probe and tracked his phone calls. The doctor’s phone call list revealed that Dr Singh was also in Nepal when Rakhi went ‘missing’. Moreover, the STF found that Rakhi’s phone was active in Pokhara from June 1 to 4. Subsequently, the team visited Pokhara where the local police informed them that they had recovered the body of a woman from the valley in the first week of June. It was discovered that the body belonged to Rakhi.
Following this, the STF interrogated Dr Singh and he reportedly confessed that he and his two accomplices – Pramod Kumar Singh and Deshdeepak Nishad from Gorakhpur area, were responsible for the crime. According to police, Dr Singh admitted that soon after Manish left Pokhara, they met Rakhi, offered her drinks laced with sedative and pushed her from a hill. Police arrested the two accomplices of Dr Singh Saturday and they too confessed their involvement in the crime.
Interestingly, even after killing Rakhi, Dr Singh not only kept updating her social media profile, but also kept her mobile phone alive. Rakhi’s phone was last tracked to Guwahati October 4. Dr Singh has confessed before the police that he had sent the victim’s phone to Guwahati via another accomplice after the murder.
According to police, Rakhi came in contact with Dr Singh when she took her father Hareram Srivastava to the latter for treatment. Gradually, the two developed intimacy and even married secretly in Gond and gifted her a house in Shahpur. However, when Dr Singh’s wife Usha came to know about the affair, she forced her husband to severe all links with Rakhi.
Meanwhile, Rakhi developed a relation with Manish and married him without taking divorce from Dr Singh. She was reportedly in regular touch with Dr Singh and persuaded him to transfer the property in Shahpur in her name. Frustrated over the ‘blackmailing’ by his former fiancée, Dr Singh planned to kill Rakhi and he got the opportunity when she visited Pokhara.
When Dr Singh contacted Rakhi in Nepal, she sent her husband to India and stayed back to meet the doctor. The doctor took her out on June 6, gave her a spiked drink and pushed her from a hill. Rakhi’s body was recovered June 8 in an unclaimed condition.