Carton led cops to ‘ killer’ husband Love affair began with a missed call, ended in brutality
VITAL CLUE The carton in which the chopped body of the woman was stuffed had a sticker of a ‘movers and packers’ company on it. The cops tracked the code and arrested woman’s husband Sajid Ali from Shaheen Bagh in south Delhi
NEWDELHI: A sticker, bearing the name of a Gurugram-based moving company on the carton in which the chopped body of a 27-year-old woman, now identified as Juhi, were found in southeast Delhi on June 21, led the police to her engineer husband, who was arrested on Tuesday.
The man’s two brothers, who assisted him in disposing of the woman’s body, were also arrested. Police said that frequent fights between the couple over their financial situation and suspicion of an extramarital affair led to the woman’s murder.
The police have identified the woman’s husband as Sajid Ali Ansari, a mechanical engineer from a university in Kuruskhetra. His brothers were identified as Hasmat Ali Ansari and Mohammad Ishtiaq, all native of Chhapra in Bihar.
Last Thursday morning, the body of the woman Juhi, a graduate in psychology, was found stuffed in a carton and in a bag, wrapped in pieces of cloth and a plastic rice sack. It was chopped into seven pieces. The carton and the bag were abandoned in a vacant plot in Jasola Vihar.
Deputy commissioner of police (southeast) Chinmoy Biswal said that a police team that had arrived at the spot found only a bag and the carton apart from Juhi’s clothes and a few rice grains on her body.
Initially, the police scanned at least a hundred garment shops to track down the shop from where Juhi could have bought the clothes she wore when she was killed. This could have helped in identifying her, Biswal said. “We also traced several rice traders from the vicinity as her body was wrapped in a rice sack,” he said.
During the probe, the police spotted that the carton in which the body parts were stuffed.
It had a sticker of a ‘movers and packers’ company on it, with a code.
“When the company was approached, the executives told the police that the code mentioned the delivery order. It was found that the company had transported the household stuff of one Javed Akhtar from Sharjah, UAE to Aligarh in Uttar Pra- desh. Police then contacted Akhtar, who told that he had taken some of the empty cartons to his another residence in southeast Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh, which he had rented out to one Sajid Ali,” Biswal said.
The DCP said that when a police team arrived at the Shaheen Bagh address, it was found that Sajid had already left the house. Neighbours told police that Sajid and his wife had left the house last week. “Questioning revealed that the appearance of the deceased woman and Sajid’s wife’s matched. This raised suspicion over Sajid and his details were procured. Following surveillance, a raid at his brother Hasmat Ali’s residence in the same locality was conducted and Sajid was arrested on Tuesday morning,” Biswal said.
During interrogation, Sajid disclosed that he had purchased a meat cleaver to kill her.
“Last Wednesday, following a heated argument, Sajid strangled her to death and then called up his brother Ishtiaq. Both of them then chopped off Juhi’s body into pieces and wrapped it in a piece of cloth and in a plastic rice sack. Then they called up Hasmat Ali, who arranged a Maruti Ertiga car in which the trio took Juhi’s body and threw it in the wooded area near Okhla,” Biswal said. NEW DELHI: In 2010, a young 18-year-old Sajid Ali fell for Juhi’s voice when he heard it for the first time over phone in his native village in Chhapra. It was a wrong number which Sajid had dialled.
However, Ali did not stop dialling the number and over the next few weeks, he and Juhi became friends. Their friendship matured into a love affair, but both of them were unaware of the tragic end that their relationship awaited.
In 2010, Ali and Juhi started meeting occasionally in their village in Chhapra.
The next year, while Juhi got admission in a government college in Chhapra to pursue BA Hons in psychology, Sajid went to Kurukshetra University to study mechanical engineering, police said.
Deputy commissioner of police (southeast) Chinmoy Biswal said that after Juhi completed her graduation in 2014, Sajid was still studying.
Fearing that her parents will get her married, Sajid fled back to his village and both got married.
Since Juhi’s family was against her decision to marry Sajid as he was not earning, they disowned Juhi, Biswal said.
Sajid then graduated as a mechanical engineer in 2015 and came to Delhi in search of a job in 2016. However, he failed to get any permanent job.
“He often used to rely on his brothers for his finances. While his brother Ishtiaq Alam, a B.tech dropout from Kanpur University was planning to go abroad to the UAE to find work, his eldest brother Hasmat Ali (46) has six children and works with an NGO,” the DCP said.
Police said, gradually Sajid and Juhi had two daughters and running a family became a task for Sajid.
“This started arguments between the couple, which would often end in violence. Juhi also came to know about another woman in Chhapra with whom Sajid had been in constant touch. Juhi often questioned Sajid about the woman, which led to fights between the couple. On June 20, one such argument turned violent and Sajid strangled his wife in a fit of rage,” the officer said.
Biswal said, the same night, Sajid called his brother Ishtiyaque and told him about Juhi’s murder who helped him in disposing the body.
Last Wednesday, Sajid strangled Juhi to death and then called up his brother Ishtiaq. Both of them then chopped off Juhi’s body into pieces... Then they called up Hasmat Ali and threw Juhi’s body near Okhla.
CHINMOY BISWAL , DCP (southeast)