A 27-year-old man has been arrested for allegedly killing his wife in south-west Delhi’s Sagarpur for refusing to get into prostitution, the police said on Saturday.
Deputy Commissioner of Police (South West) Devender Arya said that the accused has been identified as Jalil Sheikh, who hails from West Bengal. He was arrested for killing his wife Fatema Sardar in the first week of August.
Jalil had been forcing Fatema to get into prostitution, but she used to refuse to do so. The accused strangulated her with and dumped her body. The police had on August 6 received a call regarding a woman’s body, wrapped in a blanket and a plastic bag, found dumped in Shivpuri Kallad. The police reached the spot and sent the body to Deen Dayal Upadhyay Hospital for post-mortem.
A murder case was registered in the matter and teams were formed to identify the woman and the accused.
The woman’s photograph was shared in several WhatsApp groups. “On August 17, the police received a call from West Bengal. The caller identified himself as the victim’s relative. He identified the woman as Fatima Sardar and told them that she was living in Delhi with her husband Jalil Sheikh for the past few years,” Mr. Arya said, adding that Jalil was found absconding.
A police team then went to West Bengal’s South Parganas, but were informed that he had left the house and had also switched off his phone. The accused, however, was arrested on a tip-off from Kolkata’s Ballygunge railway station on August 28 and brought to Delhi.
During interrogation, he told the police that he has two wives — one was Fatema and the other lives in West Bengal. “Fatema and Jalil had come to Delhi around seven years ago and got married in 2014. They had been living in Sagarpur for the last six months,” the officer said.
The accused was earlier arrested in a human trafficking case, the police said.
