New Delhi: A week after the death of Rohit Shekhar Tiwari, the son of former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister ND Tiwari, his wife Apoorva Shukla Tiwari has been arrested on the charge of murder. Apoorva – a lawyer by profession — strangled her husband and smothered him with a pillow after a fight, the police said, citing a “turbulent and unhappy” marriage as the motive. Rohit was earlier believed to have died of a cardiac arrest.
“When Apoorva video-called Shekhar on April 15, she saw him drinking with his cousin’s wife Kumkum in the car while he was on his way back to Delhi after casting vote in Uttarakhand. She got furious on seeing them sharing the drinks from the same glass,” said an officer.
On the fateful night, on April 16, when Shekhar entered his room around 12.45 a.m, the couple had a fight as she raised questions over Shekhar’s relationship with Kumkum. She also asked Shekhar not to talk to Kumkum. When Shekhar talked back, she pounced on him and strangled him to death,” said the officer. Shekhar, who was in an inebriated state, could not resist his wife’s attempts to smother him, and he succumbed at around 1 am.
Not sure about her husband’s death, Apoorva kept checking his pulse to ascertain that he had indeed died. She stayed in his room till 1.30 a.m and put things back in place, the officer added. “Apoorva was our prime suspect as there were contradictions in her statements from the outset.
All scientific evidences and other concrete leads were against her but she tried to mislead the investigators that they were a happy couple. “She also tried to mislead the investigators when asked about her finger marks on Shekhar’s neck. She said that she and Shekhar were together and had shared intimate moments that night,” said the Crime Branch officer.
The officer said Apoorva, a practising Supreme Court lawyer, has confessed to the crime. According to the post-mortem report, death occurred within two hours of Rohit’s last meal around 11 pm. No one tried to wake him the next morning because he suffered from insomnia and would get up late.
Someone went in hours later, around 4 pm, and saw him lying unconscious, with a nosebleed. Rohit had fought a six-year-long battle in court to prove that he was the son of ND Tiwari, a veteran Congress leader who was chief minister of Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand.