In a shocking incident, a 30-year-old woman, along with her lover, allegedly smothered her husband to death on the intervening night of Friday and Saturday and said that he died of COVID-19 infection.
After being informed, a police team arrived at the location and stopped the cremation of the deceased man. The body was sent for conducting post-mortem to ascertain the exact cause of death.
The post-mortem established that the man died of “asphyxia due to antemortem smothering”.
The incident took place in Northwest Delhi’s Ashok Vihar. The victim, identified as 46-year-old Sharat Das, used to run a small shop in the area. His wife, identified as Anita, told their neighbours that she found Dass lying motionless when she woke up in the morning on May 2. She also told them that he might have died due to COVID-19 infection. The neighbours alerted the local police about the suspected coronavirus death in their residential area.
A team of police officials arrived at the scene and asked Anita to provide details. However, she could not furnish a convincing response and the neighbours also told the investigating officials that the now-deceased man had good health and did not appear to be ill, as claimed by Anita, according to a report of the Times of India.
The police officials grew suspicious about the cause of man’s death. They asked Anita for Dass’ COVID-19 test report. Vijayanta Arya, DCP, North-West told TOI that she did not have any documents for establishing the illness of her now-deceased husband and her responses were also non-satisfactory. The police stopped the cremation and sent the body for autopsy. It revealed that the man was smothered to death.
Subsequently, the police lodged a case of murder under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and initiated an investigation. During interrogation, Anita confessed that she had killed Dass as she was in love with another man, identified as Sanjay. She added that her husband knew about her relationship with Sanjay and therefore he mistreated her. She added that after her husband had slept on May 1, she sneaked Sanjay into their house and smothered Dass to death with a blanket.
