Love affair began with a missed call, ended in brutality

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, 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.