Major’s wife killed in Cantt, cops suspect someone known to her

NEWDELHI: The 35-year-old wife of an Indian Army major was murdered near the Delhi Cantonment metro station in west Delhi on Saturday afternoon, the police said.

Investigators have “strong clues” about who killed the woman, identified as Shailaja Dwivedi, said Vijay Kumar, deputy commissioner of police (west), ruling out robbery or sexual assault as the motives.

Another investigator said the probe so far has pointed to the possibility of someone known to the woman being behind her murder.

“CCTV footage has indicated that the killers had arrived at the crime spot by a car, but we will know for sure only when the case is cracked,” said the investigator on condition of anonymity because he is not authorised to speak to the media.

Shailaja Dwivedi and her husband Amit Dwivedi lived in the Army quarters in west Delhi’s Naraina with their six-year-old son. The woman was a homemaker. Her husband, an Army major who is posted in Dimapur, had recently moved to Delhi for training.

“The woman was to attend a physiotherapy session at the Research and Referral (RR) Hospital at 10 am and had left in her husband’s official car. The driver had dropped her at the hospital and returned,” said the investigator cited above.

The woman’s body was discovered by passersby on an isolated stretch of road leading to the Railway Protection Force Mess near Brar Square, close to the Delhi Cantonment metro station. Police said no eyewitnesses to the murder had appeared.

The DCP said a call to the police control room (PCR) about the woman’s death was received at 1.30 pm. “Initially, it appeared to be a case of accident. But at a closer look, we found a deep slit on her throat, confirming it was a murder,” said the officer.

The investigator cited above said the condition of the body also suggested that it was hit by a vehicle. The woman remained unidentified for the next three hours until her husband approached the Naraina police station to complain that his wife hadn’t returned home.

The major was informed about the woman’s murder, and he immediately identified the victim as his wife. The police then began speaking to her husband and other family members about possible suspects.

“While analysing CCTV footage, we came across a few vehicles that took that road. One such vehicle was a car and we suspect the killers were in that vehicle,” said the investigator. The police are going through the woman’s phone call records to know the people she was in touch with in the days preceding her murder.