A day after a 24-year-old woman was found shot dead along with her husband at Ashok Vihar here on Sunday, the police have launched a hunt for one of her brothers and his friend in connection with the double murder.
Monika's brother Ankit and one of his friends went missing after the incident came to light. Suspecting their complicity, the police are questioning the victim's relatives for their whereabouts. “More persons could be involved in the murders,” said a police officer.
The police had received information about Monika's murder from Sunder Lal Jain Hospital around 8 p.m. on Sunday.
Enquiries revealed that her brother Sanky had gone to her house with sweets and food on Sunday evening as it was their parents' marriage anniversary. He rang the bell several times from the ground floor, but did not get any response. Sanky then went to her second-floor rented accommodation and found her lying in a pool of blood. He raised an alarm, following which Monika was rushed to hospital where she was declared dead on arrival. She had been shot in the head.
Meanwhile, Sanky informed his relatives and Monika's in-laws about the incident. He purportedly told the police that he had also tried to contact his brother-in-law Kuldeep Rajput (26) on his mobile phone, but there was no response . Suspecting that something was amiss, Kuldeep's relatives and policemen tried to locate him. They found him dead in his car not far from his residence. He had been shot in the head and waist. Circumstantial evidence suggested that at least two other persons were in the car when he was shot at.
While the police managed to locate all the other close relatives of Monika, they found Ankit missing. Investigations revealed that he had called up Kuldeep on Sunday evening. “At this stage, we do not know what exactly transpired between them,” the police officer said, adding that the sequence of events leading up to the murders was not yet clear. The police have not come across any eyewitness in the case so far.
The couple's landlord, who lives on the ground and first floor of the three-storey building, told the police that he did not hear any commotion. The couple had been living there for the past three months.
Monika and Kuldeep, who got married about four years ago, were from different castes. But with time, the two families -- who live in Wazirpur village -- had reconciled with their relationship. While it is suspected to be a case of “honour killing”, the police are trying to ascertain if the murders were in anyway linked to an incident in which a young woman had recently eloped from Wazirpur village.
