Journalist stabs wife to death in Gurugram

GURUGRAM: A 29-year-old journalist in Gurugram allegedly covered his wife’s face with a blanket, stabbed her multiple times and then hit her with an iron rod on the face in his Ashok Vihar house. Pankaj Bharadwaj, the editor of a local weekly, and his accomplice have been arrested for the “planned” murder, police said on Sunday.
Pankaj had married Kirti Sharma from Delhi in April 2017, but he and his family members used to regularly torture her over trivial domestic issues, according to police officers.

Several attempts by Kirti’s father Mahesh Sharma to broker peace between his daughter and Pankaj’s family also did not yield any result.

Inspector Sumit Kumar of Sector 5 police station said police were informed about Kirti’s death on Saturday evening. “We got a call from Mahesh and sent a team to Pankaj’s house in Ashok Vihar Phase 1. We took the body in our custody and sent it for an autopsy. On Sunday, we arrested Pankaj and Naseem Ahmad for the murder,” he said.

Kirti’s father told TOI that trouble started soon after the marriage. “I spent a lot on my daughter’s wedding and even borrowed money to gift a car to Pankaj, which he had demanded. But Pankaj and his family members used to torture her on one pretext or the other, though they never directly demanded dowry,” he said.

“A few months back, Kirti suffered eardrum rupture after she was slapped by her husband. She was even undergoing treatment in Delhi and stayed in our house for some time. Whenever I tried to broker peace between my daughter and Pankaj’s family, they used to put all the blame on my daughter,” said her father.

Mahesh said he got a call from Kirti around 1.30pm on Saturday. “She asked me to come immediately to her house along with three to four people. But I ignored it like a regular family dispute. Around 7.30pm, I received another call, and it was from my son-in-law who informed me about Kirti’s death,” he said.

Mahesh informed police and rushed to Gurugram.

“By the time I reached there, they had cleaned up the house to destroy the evidence,” he said.

Police said Pankaj and Naseem had planned the murder over the past two months. “On Saturday, they got the opportunity and inflicted fatal injuries to her. They have been booked under sections 302 (murder) and 120B (criminal conspiracy) of IPC. Pankaj’s family members are also under the scanner,” said inspector Kumar.

Meanwhile, Pankaj told police that he was unhappy with his wife due to her bad behaviour and killed her while she was asleep. “It was Naseem who gave me the idea to kill my wife and even helped me purchase a knife, used in the murder,” he said.