Man kills NRI wife; dispose of body in Haryana

Though Sumit Handa, the husband who had worked in several countries, tried diverting police attention by filing a complaint stating that his wife had eloped with someone, he found himself in the police net after intense probe.

In his complaint, he had also alleged that his wife, after giving him tea laced with sedatives, left his home with jewellery and cash. The victim, 27-year-old Niranjani Pillay, was a South African passport holder and her family had migrated there long back.

Handa and Niranjani tied the knot in 2007 after a two-year-long courtship and relocated to India last year, but their marriage was under strain, police said, adding that Handa's one-year-old daughter was away from the capital during the incident.

Based on a specific information, police arrested Handa on charges of killing Niranjani and claimed that during interrogation, he had admitted to have killed his wife using a knife and laptop charger on October 29 after an altercation. "He then kept her body in the bathroom and squeezed it in a trolley bag and dumped blood-stained clothes and other incriminating materials in another bag and asked one of his colleague to drop him in Rai in Haryana," Ashok Chand, Deputy Commissioner of Police, Crime and Railways, said.

After getting dropped near a petrol pump in Rai, Handa carried the bags 200 meters away from the road, dumped them, poured petrol and burnt them. "He waited for more than 2 hours and when the body was burnt he left the place. He also collected some of the ashes in a polythene bag," Chand said. To divert police attention, the accused, police said, also sent a number of mails to his wife's e-mail id from his account asking her to come back.

"He kept telling this to his friends and he also kept searching on the net whether whether any burnt dead body had recently been recovered in Haryana," Chand said, adding that Handa had even changed the tiles in his bathroom after the murder.