When love leads to murder: Crimes of passion that shook our conscience

On June 23, 2018, when the news of the brutal murder of Shailja Dwivedi by Major Nikhil Handa broke, it rattled the nation. But the incident is not the first of its kind. Similar crimes of passion make up a fair share of murders committed in the country. According to the National Crime Record Bureau data, of the 30,450 murders that took place in 2016 in the country, a little over 10 per cent were attributed to love affairs and illicit relationships. Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Tamil Nadu topped the list. Among cities, Patna reported the highest number of similar cases, followed by Bengaluru and Delhi. The first such high-profile case that held the nation captive for months was the 1959 Nanavati case that saw Naval Commander K M Nanavati shooting dead Prem Ahuja, his English wife’s lover. In 1995, the sensational Tandoor murder case made headlines when a woman Naina Sahni, was murdered, cut to pieces and burnt in a tandoor by her husband Sushil Sharma, a Congress worker, who suspected her of having an illicit-relationship. Other gruesome cases over the years were the 2008 murder of television executive Neeraj Grover who was stabbed to death in Kannada actress Maria Susairaj’s flat and the 2003 contract killing of budding poet Madhumita Shukla at the behest of Madhumani Tripathi, wife of politician Amarmani Tripathi who opposed Shukla’s affair with her husband. More recently, in 2017, there was a reel-like plot dubbed the mutton soup murder. A young woman and her lover killed her husband and went on to disfigure her lover’s face by smearing acid so that he could pass off as her husband. But the two were caught when the lover was refused to eat the mutton soup in hospital saying he was vegetarian. The dead husband's family saw something amiss, as their son was non-vegetarian.