Bahujan Samaj Party MP Dhananjay Singh and his wife Jagriti who have been arrested in connection with the murder of a 35-year-old domestic help at their South Avenue flat would be produced at a Patiala House Court after their police custody ends on Monday.
The police said they may seek an extension of their custody as new evidence has cropped up against them and they would need time to confront the duo with it.
Footage tampered
The two were sent to five days’ police custody on Wednesday after the prosecution sought time from the court to make recoveries at their instance. The police had told the court that the MP had tampered with a digital video recorder containing footage captured by the CCTV cameras installed in the house before submitting it.
The police suspect that someone helped Mr. Singh in deleting the footage that the DVR contained and have narrowed down on a few names. So far investigators have recovered artificial antlers, blunt objects and an iron press allegedly used to torture Rakhi and two other domestic helps – Meena Sardar and a 17-year-old boy. Of this, the iron press was recovered after custodial interrogation.
The couple has been reportedly lodged in the barracks meant for police personnel at the Chanakyapuri police station.
The police have also traced Rakhi’s son Shahzan Ali to his native North 24 Parganas district. Shahzan purportedly told the police that he was scared after receiving the news of his mother’s death and the legal tangles involved in her murder case. Although he came to the Capital to claim his mother’s body, he vanished from the scene a day before the post-mortem was to be conducted.
“He told us that he was short of money and was finding it difficult to sustain himself in the Capital. He did not have money to take his mother’s body back to West Bengal and perform her last rites. We have assured him that we will make arrangements if needed and there is no reason for him to be scared,” said a senior police officer, adding that Shahzan was likely to return to Delhi with the police team on Tuesday.
Asked if Rakhi’s son was intimidated by anyone, the officer said so far Shahzan has not revealed any such thing and that it was apparently due to the circumstances which he found himself in that he went back home.
