A 32-year-old man was arrested on Thursday for allegedly strangling his pregnant wife to death at their home in Greenfield Colony of Faridabad earlier this week and trying to pass it off as a fatal robbery, police said on Friday. He was produced before a court on Friday and taken on a six-day police custody for further interrogation.
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The accused, a chef at a US-based five-star hotel in Delhi, suspected his wife of having an extramarital relationship due to a phone conversation she was having late Tuesday, police said.
Yashpal Yadav, public relations officer of Gurugram police, said an autopsy on Thursday confirmed strangulation. “On the night of July 21, he had seen his wife talking to someone over the phone which resulted in a heated argument between them,” he said.
Yadav said that he strangled her, removed all the jewellery from the room and ransacked it to pass it off as a robbery. “He had murdered her by 3am and left for his shift at the hotel by 4.19am, as per routine,” he said.
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Police said the woman’s mother-in-law found her lying unconscious on the floor in the bedroom on the second floor of their house at 9am on July 22. The family rushed her to a private hospital in Sector 28, where doctors declared her dead, but alerted police after spotting a suspicious injury mark on the neck.
On a complaint from the woman’s father, the police registered an FIR under sections 103(1) (murder) and 80 (dowry death) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita against the husband and five in-laws at the Surajkund police station.
Yadav said that the suspect’s parents and two brothers were also at the house during the murder and the police are probing whether they were also involved in the incident.
The woman was eight months pregnant, and the couple had married last November, police said.
