BATHINDA: The mysterious killing of a 45-year-old woman here on the evening of Karva Chauth could easily come in the category of freak murder.
Claiming to have solved the case, police on Tuesday arrested Shaganpreet Singh, 25, on charges of gunning down a woman from a distance of around 300 metres.
According to police, Shaganpreet was gun-practicing from the roof of his second floor house situated in Gagan Nagar and a bullet fired by him travelled 300 meters and hit Santosh Kumari on November 2 evening. Sitting in a chair, surrounded by about 45 other women, who had gathered to celebrate Karva Chauth on the fourth floor open air restaurant of a hotel, Santosh Kumari was hit in the head with a bullet that seemed to have come from nowhere. The bullet got stuck in the skull and Santosh died on the spot.
Shaganpreet, who is pursuing BCom privately, had bought the .315 bore rifle for Rs 52,000 from Bathinda-based Kapoor Gun House the same day at around 4 pm.
After purchasing the rifle, Shaganpreet went home and reached the roof of his house to test the weapon at around 5.15 pm, the same time the women had started gathering at the rooftop of hotel BR Inn, situated on the backside of his house. He fired five bullets in air one of which hit the victim, police said.
"After one of the bullets got stuck in the barrel of rifle, Shaganpreet again went to the gun house, had his rifle checked and then went to his relative's house in Bhuccho Mandi, unaware that he had just killed a woman," said Bathinda SP, R C Brar.
"We studied the bullet's trajectory and after downloading the map of the area, came to a conclusion that it couldn't have been fired from more than a distance of 300 meters," said Brar. Police had also recreated the murder scene to get an idea about the bullet's trajectory.
Shaganpreet was arrested after police got a tip-off from Kapoor Gun House that he had bought a rifle on the day of murder. The weapon has been recovered from Shaganpreet and a case under sections of 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) and 336 (endangering life) of IPC has been registered, police said.
Santosh Kumari, an employee of Military Engineering Service, was a resident of Patel Nagar and is survived by a son, daughter and husband.
Kota: The shocking decision of a community panchayat in Rajasthan's Kota district, which ordered a six-year-old rape survivor to marry her alleged rapist's son earlier this week, had come on the request of the girl's parents.
The 40-year-old neighbour allegedly raped the girl twice, a fortnight ago and again on Wednesday at Keshavpura in Kota, 250 km from Jaipur.
The six-year-old's parents had approached the panchayat, asking it to prevail upon the alleged 40-year-old rapist to get his 10-year-old son married to their daughter.
Child marriages are common in Rajasthan with betrothals often taking place in childhood while the girls are sent to their marital homes on attaining puberty.
"His son is 10-12 years old, so we said let them get married or engaged at least for now and when they are adults, we will get them formally married," the girl's mother said.
The parents made the request to save their "honour" as they felt they would not be able to find a match for their child after the incident.
But the accused refused to obey the panchayat order, offering instead to marry the minor himself.
"He refused to obey the panchayat but said he can marry her. How can a 40-year-old man marry a small child?" the child's grandfather said.
It was then that the girl's family approached the police, which arrested the accused on Thursday.
Leena Maria Paul held, Balaji alias Sekar Reddy, M Karunanidhi's 'grandson', flees after taking a loan of Rs 19 cr from Canara Bank in Chennai.
Living in Chennai, he introduced himself as an IAS officer. Dressed in formals, he travelled in a car with a red beacon responding to salutes at every intersection. He flaunted his qualifications and strong financial background, and lured many investors to put money in his projects, got loans sanctioned worth Rs 19 crore and later decamped with all the money.
Balaji alias Sekar Reddy also introduced himself as the grandson of former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi, to many. Police sources revealed that Balaji, posing as a close friend of Nikhil Gowda (former Karnataka Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy's son), also cheated his landlord in Bangalore of more than Rs 1 crore. He also posed as the son of several ministers, including T R Baalu and Karunakara Reddy, on several occasions.
His close aide and live-in partner Leena Maria Paul, a 25-year-old actress, always assisted him.
The couple — owners of a fleet of luxury cars including Rolls Royce Phantom, an Aston Martin, BMW 530 D, Range Rover, Audi A4 and others — managed to dupe several people until one of them was tracked by police.
And when police closed in on Balaji, who managed to evade arrest, Paul was busy shopping for her next party.
She was later arrested from Ambience Mall in Vasant Kunj, where she was with six bouncers.
In a joint raid, Central Crime Branch, Chennai Police and Delhi Police, also arrested Paul for allegedly cheating people of Rs 76 lakh on the pretext of getting them government contracts and supply orders.
Paul has worked for Tamil, Hindi and Malyalam films such as Madras Cafe, Cobra, Red Chillies and Husbands in Goa.
The 29-year-old wife of a shopkeeper was strangled and her three-year-old son kidnapped from his home in Mayur Vihar Phase-III here on Saturday by unknown assailants. The police suspect involvement of someone known to the victim.
Preliminary investigations have indicated that the incident took place around noon when Mohi Sinha’s husband Inam was at his garment shop. Their domestic help was in the house at Ghadoli Dairy Farm Colony when the assailants struck around noon. At gun-point they overpowered Mohi, strangled her with an electric wire and decamped with jewellery and kidnapped her son Ishu.
The domestic help subsequently alerted Inam, following which the police were called in. As the case involved kidnapping of a minor, Additional Commissioner of Police (Crime Branch) Ravindra Yadav visited the spot. A forensic science team also lifted evidence from the crime scene.
Police enquiries revealed that Mohi had married Inam about five years ago against her parents’ wishes. They then started living in Kondli where her husband set up a mobile phone shop. About two years ago Inam bought a flat in Mayur Vihar Phase-III and about a fortnight ago he had opened a garment shop in the same area.
NEW DELHI: Three days after a 29-year-old woman was found murdered at her apartment in Mayur Vihar Phase-III, her kidnapped son has been rescued from Haridwar in Uttarakhand. Two Delhi Police sub-inspectors who led the operation to rescue three-year-old Ishu, and a policeman of Uttarakhand Police were injured when the kidnappers attacked them with blades, police said. The police team is bringing back Vijay, a former associate of the child's father, Iman, to Delhi for questioning.
Ever since Ishu's mother Mohi Sinha was found murdered last Saturday, several police teams from the east district had been raiding places in UP, Haryana and Uttarakhand to arrest the suspects and rescue the child.
Police now claim Sinha might have been killed for ransom. "We are treading cautiously as it is a ransom case. We have asked the SDM to take down statements of Inam and his father-in-law,'' said an officer. Sources said Inam's family had done transactions of more than Rs 50 lakh recently to buy a flat and set up a shop.
While police have suspicions about Inam's role in the case they are also investigating the role of his maid Beena, besides the arrested man Vijay. "A few others are on the radar. We will establish the exact role of each of these suspects only after we rescue the child. We will then get an exact sequence of events,'' an investigating officer told TOI on Monday morning before Ishu was rescued.
The murder and kidnapping case has left Sinha's family shocked. They said she and Inam had been good friends and had been living happily in Delhi. "The two of them had been good friends in Supol, Bihar, and had known each other from childhood. Inam had come to Delhi seven years ago and had set up a mobile phone store in the Mayur Vihar Phase-III area. Mohi followed soon after to study journalism," said a family member.
Their relationship soured terms between the families that had been cordial otherwise. Regardless, they married in 2008. The couple struggled a lot to make the mobile services shop—Inam's first business foray—a big success. Their neighbours said the couple seldom argued and got along so well that it was hard to tell that they belonged to different communities.
A woman in India is being investigated for murder after her alleged rapist died in a house fire, Al Jazeera reported on Wednesday.
The unnamed woman, a widow, claims she was asleep when the alleged assailant, Bhola Thakur, entered her house early Tuesday morning and raped her. A police officer told the Hindustan Times that the man was "so drunk he [fell] asleep in her house after committing the crime."
The Indian Express reports that the woman contemplated committing suicide out of shame, but changed her mind and instead poured kerosene on her slumbering attacker before fleeing the house.
Thakur died in the fire. Police told the Hindustan Times he had been previously accused in dozens of cases of "eve-teasing" -- a euphemism used in India for public sexual assault. Additionally, neighbors reported that Thakur had been harassing the woman for a few months, the Times of India notes.
In her police report, the woman admitted to lighting her assailant on fire. "I have no regret that I burned Bhola alive," she said, via TOI. "I put kerosene on him before he raped me, which I could not stop, and burned him out of revenge."
The woman was arrested by the police on Tuesday, according to the Hindustan Times. Thakur's widow has reportedly filed a report against the woman, and police are investigating the alleged rape and murder cases.
The decision to handle this case as one of murder rather than rape has caused some controversy in India, as many feel the police should have been more sympathetic to a woman who apparently acted out of self-defense. TOI points out that private defense is protected under the law even in the case of the attacker's death.
India is under increased pressure to improve women's rights after a brutal gang rape of a young woman last year provoked mass protests around the country.
In what is seen as an encouraging move, India's Parliament passed an expansive new law to protect women against sexual violence in March.
"It's a significant moment. We have taken many steps forward," said a women's rights activist quoted by the Associated Press. "Much, much more needs to be done."
UT cop murder: Basant Kumar, Sarita sent to 4-day police custody
Dismissed UT police constable Basant Kumar and his girlfriend Sarita were today remanded to police custody till June 17. Basant Kumar alias Bunty was accused of murdering a Chandigarh Police inspector Sucha Singh on June 8.
Bunty was arrested by the Haryana police from a hotel in Paharganj area of New Delhi in the wee hours of Sunday. His girlfriend Sarita Rani, 23 -- who had fled with him on April 18 and was accompanying him during the Chandigarh stabbing -- was nabbed with him.
A 57-year-old inspector posted with the UT police traffic wing was stabbed to death, while a 42-year-old home guard volunteer was left injured, by the duo on June 8.
Bunty was already wanted for the murder of Sarita's husband Sandeep and her mother-in-law Roshni Devi using his official rifle on April 18 at Deepalpur village before taking Sarita with him in a taxi he had hired from Chandigarh. The lover duo wanted to get married but faced social barriers due to them being from the same village and both belonging to the same Jat 'brotherhood'.
