Police to charge wife of ND Tiwari’s son with murder

NEW DELHI: Delhi Police’s Crime Branch is likely to file the chargesheet in the murder of Rohit Shekhar Tiwari in the next two days, and according to a source, will charge his wife, 35-year-old Apoorva Shukla, for the crime.
As first reported by TOI on May 1, the investigation established that Shukla suspected Tiwari had a son outside of marriage and planned the murder as she feared that the property would go to the child.
The police have also claimed that she was tired of the failed marriage and outraged with the indifferent attitude of her husband towards her. A brewing financial crisis in the family added to her concern as she saw her dreams falling apart, police claimed. The cops found that Shukla had left Tiwari’s home soon after the marriage, but returned later when the two tried to reconcile. However, their differences kept growing.
Apart from the statements of the witnesses, which included the people who were present in the house on the night of murder, the police have listed CCTV footage of the house and the mobile locations of the occupants of the house as primary evidence. The CCTV footage shows Shukla entering Tiwari’s room at night. The postmortem and the forensic reports have corroborated the police’s theory, the source added.
Tiwari was the son of veteran politician N D Tiwari who had fought a six-year battle in the court to prove that he was his biological son. After the politician finally relented and gave his blood sample for a DNA test in 2012 Delhi high court had finally declared him as the biological father in 2014. The senior Tiwari, who was 88 years old at that time, also married Tiwari’s mother, Ujjawala.
Tiwari was found dead inside his Defence Colony residence in the afternoon of April 16. He had returned from Uttarakhand around 11.30pm a day before after casting his vote. His death was reported around 4.41pm when the Max Hospital in Saket received an emergency call from his residence. His mother was already at the hospital for treatment when she received a call about his condition and rushed home with an ambulance. Tiwari was declared ‘brought dead’ at the hospital around 5pm.
Four days later, the police filed an FIR of murder after the initial autopsy report suggested foul play. A medical board of five doctors conducted the postmortem and concluded that the cause of death was asphyxiation as a result of strangulation and smothering. Some marks were noticed around the neck and Tiwari was bleeding from the nose when discovered by the family.
The case was transferred to the Crime Branch, which arrested Shukla on April 24 for the murder.