Major Nikhil Rai Handa was produced before a Delhi court on Monday. (Express photo)
A Delhi court Monday sent Major Nikhil Rai Handa, the Army officer accused of murdering the wife of another Army Major, to four-day police custody. Handa was arrested from Meerut after 35-year-old Shailza Dwivedi, wife of Major Amit Dwivedi, was found dead on Saturday at Brar Square near Delhi Cantt Metro station. Police had said the woman’s throat was slit and she was thrown out of a vehicle, as per eyewitnesses.
Police sought four-day custody on the grounds that they needed to recover the murder weapon as well as “bloodstained” clothes worn by the accused. “The place from where the victim was picked up by the accused, and route followed to the place of occurrence, is to be ascertained. The places the accused visited after the commission of the crime from Delhi to Meerut are to be ascertained,” police said in their remand plea.
Defence counsel Sanjeev Sahay opposed the remand on the ground that no probe has been conducted by the investigating officer so far. “The accused has been in custody since Sunday morning, and we don’t know what kind of investigation police have done so far that they require four more days… You (police) just want to interrogate him (Handa) to make him confess,” Sahay submitted.
Metropolitan Magistrate Manisha Tripathy said the grounds were “justified” for granting a police remand.