New Delhi: Within a fortnight, the Delhi Police have unearthed yet another gruesome and spine-chilling murder, similar to the Shraddha Walker case in the national Capital.
The police confirmed on Monday that a quadragenarian, later identified as Anjan Das and a resident of East Delhi's Trilokpuri area, was murdered and his body was chopped off.
The Crime Branch arrested the deceased's wife and son who allegedly killed him and chopped off his body into 10 pieces and also refrigerated them, cops claimed. Both the mother and son have been identified as 48-year-old Poonam and 25-year-old Deepak. They reside at block 4 of the Trilokpuri area. According to Special CP Crime Branch Ravindra Singh Yadav, the shocking case of murder was reported on June 1 when the cops found a body part in a plastic bag and human organs lying at the edge of the deserted bushes on the ground. "On June 5, the lower part of a human leg was found lying in a decomposed state. Next to it, another human body part was visible in white polythene," Yadav mentioned while addressing a press conference here.
The senior cop also added that the investigating team found two white-coloured polythene bags, containing a portion of the human leg and another body part that seemed like a thigh. Another human thigh-like body part was found in a polythene bag lying nearby.
After further investigation and examination, the forensic team, along with the investigation team searched for other body parts around Ram Leela Ground and in the forest area, but nothing was found.
The recovered body parts were shifted to LBS Hospital after inspection by the FSL Team. After the examination on the following day —June 6 — the decomposed body parts were sent for preservation in the local hospital.
The police also added that after the brutal murder and further chopping off the body into pieces with a sharp weapon, the accused placed some of these parts at the Ram Leela Ground to destroy evidence while some other parts were hidden at other different locations. Subsequently, a case under Sections 302/201 IPC was registered at the Pandav Nagar police station.
The cops also confirmed that the head and skull of the deceased were also recovered from a plastic bag, but the face could not be recognised due to decomposition.
The accused lady was living with the deceased since 2011. With their arrest, the identity of the deceased has been established. The deceased's mobile phone and clothes of the accused persons seen in the CCTV footage while disposing of the body parts have also been recovered.
Millennium Post reached the spot of the incident and learned that very often quarrels used to take place between the deceased and the accused lady over trivial issues. However, locals were unaware of the incident. While speaking to Millennium Post, 66-year-old Altaf said: "Anjan Das used to drink a lot and therefore, a lot of disputes used to take place between him and his wife. But we never got to know about the murder."
The victim's 25-year-old neighbour Kalpana said his family members' behaviour was normal and they never got to know about such a gruesome incident.
"It was an extremely difficult task as a span of almost six months had already passed by after the incident, and many teams had already worked on every aspect to crack the case but there was no breakthrough," police said.
During the investigation, the doctor opined that the deceased was an adult male. CCTV footage of nearby areas where body parts were found was rechecked and it was observed that on the intervening night of May 31 and June 1, a lady and a man with a plastic bag had thrown them off at East Delhi's deserted Ram Leela Ground.
Further, after scrutinising the CCTV footage, it was found that on June 1, even during the day, the same suspicious duo was seen near the spot where the plastic bag, containing the body parts of the deceased, was found. Technical surveillance and local information were built up. Based on technical surveillance, the suspected persons were interrogated, but no fruitful results came out. The police also found that even after Anjan Das went missing for almost 5-6 months, his family members did not report it to the police.
The accused were questioned, however, they came up with conflicting versions, and later after scientific interrogation, they disclosed that they both hatched a conspiracy to murder Das. After killing him, they cut his body into pieces and dumped them at various places in plastic bags all over the Ram Leela Ground and Ganda Nala of New Ashok Vihar area.
The deceased's wife and accused Poonam is a permanent resident of Jharkhand and got married at the age of 13 to one Sukhdev Tiwari from Bihar. She was blessed with one daughter with wedlock at the age of 14. Her husband, Sukhdev Tiwari, went to Delhi for work but never came back. In 1997, she along with her daughter came to Delhi in search of him. Then she again got married to Kallu and started living with him. She was blessed with a son named Deepak (co-accused) and two daughters. One of her daughters died at the age of four after falling off the roof. Kallu was an alcoholic and did not do any work for a living. In 2011, she met Anjan Das (the deceased) who worked as a lift mechanic and was residing on the upper floor of her building on rent. As Kallu was an alcoholic and did not pay attention to her, she befriended Das, and in 2016, after Kallu expired due to liver failure, she started living with the former. Later, she came to know that Anjan Das was already married and was having eight children (seven daughters and one son) from his first wife. Das stopped doing any work and used all her earnings for his expenses. He started stealing her jewellery and cash and sent it to his first wife and children in Bihar, and due to this, they had frequent quarrels.
The police further disclosed that in March-April, Poonam came to know that Das was targeting her divorced daughter as well as one of her daughters-in-law. He even tried to molest and rape them. Poonam and Deepak got very angry due to his constant lecherous habits. So, in April 2022, she, along with her son Deepak hatched a conspiracy to eliminate Das and served alcohol to him with sleeping pills in it. Deepak had already arranged a dagger and a knife to kill him and when Das felt dizzy, they seized the opportunity and stabbed him with the dagger and knife over his neck, chest and abdomen.
After he was dead, his body was kept in the room and when the next morning his blood got drained, they cleaned up the blood from the room. Further, they cut the deceased's body into various pieces, preserved them in a fridge and later kept them in different plastic bags. Further, whenever they got an opportunity, they dumped those plastic bags with his body parts at the Ram Leela Ground and near Ganda Nala.