Man found dead in bathroom, murder plot goes back 2 years

Ghaziabad: A chance encounter at a tea shop two years ago started a chain of events that ended with the murder of a 50-year-old tea shop owner at the hands of his wife and her partner — all inspired by true crime shows on TV. They were arrested on Tuesday.
Two years ago, Kapil, a driver, had stopped by a roadside tea shop in Muradnagar. He struck up a conversation with the owner of the shop, Ashok Sharma.
Ashok was 50, had polio and was lonely. “In that conversation, he told Kapil (now 40) that he wanted to get married but had not met anyone,” OP Singh, the station house officer (SHO) of Muradnagar police station, said. Kapil went home and mulled it over. A week later, he met Ashok again. “He told Ashok that he had the perfect match in mind. A woman named Shalu,” said Singh. Ashok was open to the idea, met Shalu (now 36) and the two got married.
But Shalu was Kapil’s girlfriend. The two had met in 2016 after her husband died in an accident in Sultanpur. She was looking for a job and met Kapil.
The day Kapil had met Ashok, he had spoken about it with Shalu.
“They would watch true crime stories on TV, in which older men were ensnared and killed off for property. They planned something similar — kill Ashok and make it look like an accident,” said Singh.
Besides his tea shop, Ashok had land and property in Muradnagar and Masuri. So Kapil set up his own tea shop at Dasna and moved there. “By Kapil’s own admission, in the two years that followed, he and Shalu tried many things — rigging his car brakes, using rat poison — all inspired by what they saw on TV. But Ashok, miraculously, survived these attempts,” Singh said.
But then, on May 29, Ashok was found dead in the bathroom.
“His wife called us around 8.30am and said he had died of electrocution. But when we got there, we saw no sign of electrical shock to his body. We sent it for autopsy. The report said he had been suffocated to death by a pillow,” Singh said.
Ashok’s family had already told police they suspected something was wrong.
On June 2, police started questioning people. “Shalu broke down when questioned. She confessed she and Kapil had planned it all to get a hold of Ashok’s property. They had killed Ashok on May 28 and informed police the following morning,” Singh said.
The two were booked for murder, produced in court and sent to jail.