delhi

Updated: Jun 27, 2018 11:11 IST

A sticker bearing the name of a Gurugram-based moving company on the carton in which the chopped body parts of a 27-year-old woman, now identified as Juhi, were found in southeast Delhi on June 21, led the police to her engineer husband, who was arrested on Tuesday.

The man’s two brothers, who assisted him in disposing the woman’s body, were also arrested. Police said frequent fights between the couple over their financial situation and suspicion of an extra-marital affair led to the woman’s murder.

The police have identified the woman’s husband as Sajid Ali Ansari, a mechanical engineer from a university in Kuruskhetra. His brothers were identified as Hasmat Ali Ansari and Mohammad Ishtiaq, all native of Chhapra in Bihar.

It was last Thursday morning when the body of the woman, Juhi, a graduate in psychology, chopped in seven pieces, was found stuffed in a carton and in a bag, wrapped in pieces of cloth and a plastic rice sack. The carton and the bag were abandoned in a vacant plot in Jasola Vihar.

Deputy commissioner of police (southeast) Chinmoy Biswal said a police team that had arrived at the spot, found only a bag and the carton apart from Juhi’s clothes and a few rice grains on her body.

Initially, the police scanned at least a hundred garment shops to track down the shop from where Juhi could have bought the clothes she wore when she was killed. This could have helped in identifying her, Biswal said. “We also traced several rice traders from the vicinity as her body was wrapped in a rice sack,” he said. It was during probe that the police spotted that the carton, in which the body parts were stuffed, had a sticker of a ‘movers and packers’ company on it, with a code written.

“When the company was approached, the executives told the police that the code mentioned the delivery order. It was found that the company had transported the household stuff of one Javed Akhtar from Sharjah, UAE to Aligarh in Uttar Pradesh. Police then contacted Akhtar, who told that he had taken some of the empty cartons to his another residence in southeast Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh, which he had rented out to one Sajid Ali,” Biswal said.

The DCP said that when a police team arrived at the Shaheen Bagh address, it was found that Sajid had already left the house. Neighbours told police that Sajid and his wife had left the house last week. “Questioning revealed that the appearance of the deceased woman and Sajid’s wife’s matched. This raised suspicion over Sajid and his details were procured.

Following surveillance, a raid at his brother, Hasmat Ali’s residence, in the same locality, was conducted and Sajid was arrested on Tuesday morning,” Biswal said.

During interrogation, Sajid disclosed that he had purchased a meat cleaver to kill her.

“Last Wednesday, following a heated argument, Sajid strangled her to death and then called up his brother Ishtiaq. Both of them then chopped off Juhi’s body into pieces and wrapped it in a piece of cloth and in a plastic rice sack. Then they called up Hasmat Ali, who arranged a Maruti Ertiga car in which the trio took Juhi’s body and threw it in the wooded area near Okhla,” Biswal said.