Court sends Army Major accused of murdering colleague's wife to police custody

NEW DELHI: An Army Major, arrested for allegedly killing another officer's wife, was today sent to four-day police custody by a Delhi court.

Metropolitan Magistrate Manisha Tripathy granted the custody of Major Nikhil Handa, who was produced before the court amid tight security, to the police which said he has to be taken to Meerut in Uttar Pradesh to make certain recoveries including his clothes and the weapon used to commit the crime.

"Since weapon of the offence (knife) used in committing the offence is to be recovered, clothes worn by the accused at the time of offence are to be recovered, the place from where the victim was picked up by the accused and route followed by the accused to the place of occurrence is to be ascertained, the persons contacted by the accused after commission of the crime are to be ascertained, the source of weapon of offence is to be established, the places where the accused visited after the commission of crime from Delhi to Meerut are to be ascertained, in my considered opinion, four days police custody is justified," the magistrate said.

Handa was arrested yesterday from Meerut for his alleged involvement in the killing of another Major's wife in west Delhi on Saturday.

The woman's body was found with her throat slit near the Brar Square in the Delhi Cantonment area.

During the arguments today, the police said it needed the custody of the accused to take him to Meerut and make recoveries.

Opposing the remand application, the counsel for the accused, advocate Sanjeev Sahai, argued that no investigation had been done by the police since Handa was arrested and said the recoveries which the police claimed to make, made no ground for his custody.

Initially, the police had not supplied the copy of the remand application and the FIR to the counsel of the accused, who sought them before the court.

The court then directed that the copies of these documents be supplied to the accused.

According to the police, it had received information that a woman had died in an accident.

Later, when they inspected the body, it was found that her throat was slit, the police has said.

The accused had allegedly run a car over her face and the body in order to make the incident appear as an accident, the police alleged.

The woman was dropped at the Army Base Hospital in her husband's official vehicle by a driver, who could not find her when he returned to pick her up later.