jaipur

Updated: Oct 08, 2017 21:41 IST

A 35-year-old taekwondo coach from Alwar, who was arrested on charges of murdering her husband, three sons and a nephew, was a hard nut to crack, the police said on Sunday.

Polcie said Santosh Sharma had plotted the murders with her ‘lover’, Hanuman Jat. The duo had hired two contract killers — identified as Kapil (19) and Deepak (20). She had given her husband and children food laced with an anaesthetic drug which led them to fall asleep, police added.

All the four accused have been sent to police custody for four days by the additional chief judicial magistrate.

The bodies of 45-year-old Banwari Lal Sharma, his three sons – Aman (17), Happy (15), Ajju (12) – and nephew Nikki (10) were found in Alwar’s Shivaji Park area on the morning of October 3. The bodies were cremated at Garu village in Kathumar in the evening.

Police said Santosh faced the villagers’ wrath during the funeral and they alleged that she had killed the five people. After the funeral, Santosh went to her sister’s house in Nagar town of Bharatpur.

Top police officials, including the superintendent of police, quizzed her for close to three hours in Bharatpur on October 4. “She kept saying her husband and children are in a Jaipur hospital and requested us to take her there,” said an officer who was present during the interrogation and didn’t want to be named.

On October 6, police brought Santosh to Alwar. “Around 1 am, she said she had opened the door to her husband’s killers and told us about her lover, Hanuman Jat, who was in Udaipur,” said a police officer.

Jat was arrested from Udaipur and brought to Alwar. “When the two were brought face to face, they spilled the beans about the conspiracy and its execution,” the officer added.

Sources aware of the questioning of the accused said Jat claimed he was in love with Santosh ever since they began training in taekwondo, the Korean martial art, and wanted to get married. He reportedly said he had asked Santosh to divorce her husband or to elope with him.