Engineer arrested for killing wife

Vartak Nagar Police said the engineer with L&T, Siddhesh Dalvi allegedly strangulated his wife Sushmita yesterday and informed relatives that she had committed suicide.
However, postmortem reports indicated that it was a case of murder and not suicide, police said.

The couple tied the knot just less than one year ago and it was a love marriage. The duo is said to have had a dispute over a child issue resulting in the murder.

"Siddhesh told us that he had gone out around 11 30am to buy biscuits. When he returned, he found his wife hanging by a T-shirt from the ceiling fan," said senior police inspector N N Kakad.

Siddhesh claimed to have brought her body down. However, the blood from her nose and mouth,  her pale face gave away the killing. Also, police found it hard to digest that the deceased used a T-shirt to hang herself from the fan.

"The T-shirt was too short to be used for hanging and even the fan was intact. The post-mortem report states that she died due to smothering and strangulation," said Kakad.

Police, which initially had registered a case of accidental death later arrested Siddhesh for murder. He was produced in court and has been remanded to police custody till September 5.

Siddhesh and Sushmita were cousins before they fell in love and married each other in December 2010. After the wedding, the couple moved in to a rented flat in Shammi Society, Vasant Vihar.

Siddhesh worked with a construction company, while Sushmita was a homemaker. Sushmita wanted to have a child but Siddhesh wanted to wait till they had a house of their own, police said. This was a source of constant friction between the couple, they added.