39-year-old airhostess Anissia Batra allegedly committed suicide by jumping off the terrace of her Panchsheel Park residence
Four days after 39-year-old airhostess Anissia Batra allegedly committed suicide by jumping off the terrace of her Panchsheel Park residence, Delhi Police arrested her husband Mayank Singhvi on Monday evening. A police officer said, “He was questioned for an hour… he will be produced before a magistrate on Tuesday.”
Police said a case has been registered against him under IPC Section 304B, which pertains to dowry death. On Monday morning, Delhi Police had issued a lookout circular for Singhvi to “ensure his availability for the investigation”.
After Batra allegedly committed suicide, her family had alleged that it was a murder and that her husband “had been consistently assaulting her”.
On June 27, Batra’s father, a retired Army Major General in Chandigarh, had filed a complaint at Hauz Khas police station expressing concern for her safety, stating: “If anything happens to Anissia, Singhvi and his parents are to be held responsible for it… he is a violent man.” He had returned to Chandigarh afterwards.
About two weeks after his complaint, Batra was found dead. Asked if any action had been taken in that period by Hauz Khas police station staff, Deputy Commissioner of Police (South) Romil Baaniya said, “They had apprehensions about her safety and filed an application… everyone has access to emergency number 100 and she could have called.”
Family members of Anissia Batra, who committed suicide on Friday. (Express Photo: Abhinav Saha)
The Delhi Police has seized Singhvi’s BMW, Batra’s diamond ring, and their mobile phones.
“Their bank account details too have been accessed as there is apprehension that sale of a property in Vasant Kunj recently led to conflicts between the two,” Baaniya said.
Apart from a distress WhatsApp message to a close friend informing her that she was ending her life due to marital discord at 4.12 pm on July 13, Batra had also texted her husband, who was home at the time, the same thing, DCP Baaniya said.
Police said she was taken to Max Hospital, Panchsheel Park, by her husband, where she was declared “brought dead”.
Meanwhile, a second post-mortem was conducted at AIIMS after Batra’s family alleged that “the first post-mortem wasn’t videographed, as asked by the sub-divisional magistrate”.
A team from the Forensic Science Laboratory was also called in to “reconstruct the crime scene”.
Asked about the four-day delay, Baaniya said, “The crime team already lifted relevant exhibits on Friday.”
Singhvi, police said, works at a firm in Gurgaon. The two got married on February 23, 2016, after a four-month courtship.
A close family associate of the Batras’ claimed Mayank was a divorcee and she found out about this after they got married.
The FIR filed on Saturday alleges that “a week after the wedding in 2016, Anissia and Mayank went to Dubai for their honeymoon where he physically assaulted her in the hotel room and lobby… she bore bruises on her body”.
On April 14, 2018, the victim’s mother Nillum Batra moved to Delhi from Chandigarh “due to safety concerns for her daughter” and stayed there for a month.
In the FIR, she alleged, “I tried to protect my daughter from Mayank’s assault on several occasions… he would often ask her for money. The police also visited their home several times because of the scale of the fights.”