Ghaziabad: Upset over his wife leaving him, a 28-year-old man allegedly killed his four-year-old daughter after he could not stop the baby crying. Vasudev Gupta was arrested on Thursday while he was roaming around with the baby’s body in his auto-rickshaw in search of his wife in Noida.
Originally from Sultanpur, Gupta has been living with his wife and two children in a rented house in Khoda Colony for the past few years. He is an auto-rickshaw driver, while his wife works at a spa in Noida.
Around 20 days ago, police said, Gupta’s wife left the house, along with their three-year-old son only, after a heated argument with him. She had left their daughter with Gupta. On Thursday morning, the four-year-old had been crying for a long time. Unable to stop her crying, an irritated Gupta strangled her to death.
The accused then took the body of his daughter in his auto-rickshaw after wrapping it in a towel and started roaming around Noida and Khoda Colony in Ghaziabad, looking for his wife. He was arrested after over six hours after his younger brother alerted the cops.
Ravi, the brother, said that around 5pm on Thursday, he had gone to Gupta’s house and found that the gate was opened but the father-daughter duo was not there. “When I called my brother on his mobile, he told him that he had killed his daughter and was in Noida looking for his wife. Immediately, I called the Noida police,” he said.
A senior police official said that as soon as the Noida police received the information, a search operation was launched and Gupta was nabbed near the Sector-11 junction. “He told us that the girl had been crying repeatedly and alleged that his wife had deserted him for her lover. We found the body wrapped in a towel,” he said.
Md Aslam, SHO of Khoda police station, said that Gupta was looking for his wife but he didn’t have her address. “First, he looked for his wife in Khoda Colony and then went to Noida. The accused had gone to Sectors 6 and 8 in the search of his wife as her friends live there. But when they refused to give any information about his wife, he decided to dump the body outside the spa in Sector 63 in Noida where his wife works.”
Soon after he was nabbed, the Noida police informed their Ghaziabad counterparts. “A police team was sent to Noida and took Gupta into custody. The body was sent for an autopsy, and the report is awaited. We are also trying to track down the baby’s mother,” the SHO said.
An FIR was lodged under Section 302 (murder) of IPC against Gupta. He was produced in a court that sent him to judicial custody.