Three men, including an Army jawan, have been arrested for allegedly murdering a 56-year-old woman in Uttarakhand’s Nainital district as part of a revenge plot linked to the killing of the soldier’s father in 2023, police said on Thursday.
CCTV footage purportedly captured the accused assaulting and abducting her before dumping her body from a vehicle near the crime scene. “A police team rushed to the spot and identified the deceased as Vimla Devi, wife of Khilaf Singh Bisht. Police identified the arrested men as Mohit Fartyal (32), an Army jawan posted with the Rajputana Rifles regiment of the Indian Army, and Sairan (21) and Mohammad Abbuzar (22), both residents of Ramnagar. Preliminary investigations suggest that Fartyal orchestrated the attack to avenge his father Govind Singh Bisht’s murder in 2023, in which the deceased woman’s sons were named as accused in the FIR, Ramnagar Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Manjunath TC said. The SSP said the incident came to light on Tuesday when the police received a distress call via the Dial 112 emergency service regarding a woman’s body lying outside the residence of Trilok Singh Bisht in Kishanpur Choi.
The woman, Vimla Devi, was allegedly assaulted and drowned before her body was dumped outside a residence in Kishanpur Choi village, police said. The three men were also allegedly on their way to Almora to eliminate the victim’s sons when police intercepted them near Ramlila Ground in Ramnagar, officers said. As the body bore severe injury marks, a forensic team was called in to collect scientific evidence from the scene,” the SSP said.
All three accused were produced before a local court on Thursday and remanded to judicial custody, police said, adding that further investigation into the matter is underway.
