A shocking murder came to the forefront on Sunday after Army Major Nikhil Handa was arrested. Handa who was currently posted in Nagaland’s Dimapur was arrested from Meerut (Uttar Pradesh). Handa is accused of killing his colleague Major Amit Dwivedi’s wife Shailaja. Shailaja’s body was found on a 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 was obsessed with Shailaja, even exchanged more than 3,300 calls and messages since January with the victim, and wanted to marry her. He murdered her after she showed a disinclination to get married.
Here some shocking facts about the murder case:
- Shailaja (a beauty contest finalist) and Nikhil Handa first met in 2015 in Nagaland where Handa and Major Amit Dwivedi (husband of the victim) were posted.
- After the meeting, 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 Handa 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 Shailaja and Handa seated inside a Honda City car.
- Police said the car contained evidence – bloodstains, more than one knife. There was a Swiss knife, which has prints all over it, the police said. “It looks like he slit her (throat) suddenly,” an officer said.
- After the murder, he reportedly took his Honda City car for a thorough cleaning but forensic experts were still able to detect traces of blood.
- The police say Major Handa also tried to get rid of her phone by breaking it to pieces and dumping it in a trash can near his home, but it was found.
- “We have fingerprints and Shailza’s hair from the car. Handa also deleted many apps from his and her phones. We are trying to retrieve them,” said a police officer.
- CCTV footage from outside the Army Base Hospital in the cantonment showed Shailza getting into a car, not long before her body was found in the area.