Major held for murder of fellow officer’s wife
Major Nikhil Handa was obsessed with Major Dwivedi’s and wanted her to marry him; he slit her throat when she refused; body was run over by car to make it look like hit & run
The Delhi police have arrested an Army major for the murder of another officer’s wife, who was found on Saturday on the roadside with her throat slit and the body run over by a car. All this happened in the high-security Delhi Cantonment area.
Major Nikhil Handa, it is suspected, was obsessed with Shailaja, wife of Major Amit Dwivedi, and wanted to marry her; they possibly even had illicit ties. He murdered her after she showed a disinclination to get married.
Both had met in 2015 in Nagaland where Handa and Shailaja's husband were posted. They had kept in touch, even when she came to Delhi after her husband was transferred. They talked continuously on phone, though he was the one who called her more often, the police said. Major Dwivedi once caught them during a video call. "He confronted his wife and Nikhil and warned him to stay away from his wife," said an officer of the Delhi Police during a press conference.
The obsessed Major had even gotten his son admitted to the army hospital in Delhi so that he could meet Shailaja.
The 30-year-old deceased had left home in the morning for a physiotherapy session at the Army's base hospital. An official vehicle assigned to her husband had dropped her there. However, when the vehicle went to pick her up, the driver was told that the major's wife had not come for her session.
At around noon, her body was found near Delhi Cantonment metro station. Initially, it was presumed that
she had been run over, but the post-mortem examination revealed that her throat had been also slit. The body was run over to make it look like a hit and run.
The CCTV cameras installed outside the hospital showed both Shailja and Handa seated inside a Honda City car. "After that Handa went missing and his phone was switched off. He was nabbed in Meerut in the same car," a police official privy to the case said.
Sources told CNN IBN that Amit Dwivedi was to leave for Sudan on a UN mission in a few weeks and Shailza was to accompany him. The couple have an eight-year-old child. The role of possible 7accomplices of Nikhil is also under the scanner.