Doctor killed ex-wife, kept updating her social media account for 7 months

GORAKHPUR: A well-known surgeon of Gorakhpur , Dr Dharmendra Pratap Singh, allegedly murdered his ex-wife Rakhi Srivastava aka Rajeshwari by pushing her off a cliff at Pokhra in Nepal, but kept her virtually alive for seven months through a ruse that she was in Assam. He kept updating her social media account before the case unfolded.The doctor and his two accomplices, Pramod Kumar Singh and Deshdeepak Nishad, were arrested from Daudpur area of Gorakhpur and sent to jail on Saturday. Initially, Rakhi’s second husband Manish Sinha was nabbed for questioning as her family had filed a case against him after she went missing in June. But, later the trail took the special task force (STF) of UP Police to her first husband, Dr Singh, and the case was cracked. Dr Singh runs a nursing home in Gorakhpur.“We arrested the doctor and his two accomplices for killing Rakhi,” STF IG Amitabh Yash told reporters. The three were arrested on Friday.“Rakhi was missing from Gorakhpur and her brother Amar Prakash Srivastav had lodged missing/kidnapping report with Shahpur police on June 24, 2018, under section 366, 506 of IPC against Manish, a resident of Gaya in Bihar,” the IG added.During the probe, the STF came to know that Rakhi had gone to Nepal along with Manish on June 1. But she stayed back while Manish returned. Since Dr Singh was also under the purview of the probe, police took out his call details, which revealed that he too was in Nepal at the time when Rakhi went missing. Her phone was active at Pokhra in Nepal between June 1 and 4. When STF team visited Pokhra, the local police confirmed that they had recovered a woman’s body in the first week of June. STF identified the body to be that of Rakhi.“This made Dr Singh a prime suspect. After sustained interrogation, he confessed to have killed Rakhi as she was blackmailing him to get money and property,” said the IG.The STF said that Dr Singh and his two aides went to meet Rakhi in Pokhra after Manish came back. “They took her out, offered her a sedative-laced drink and pushed her off a cliff in Pokhra itself,” the IG told reporters.“However, even after killing Rakhi, they kept updating her social media account through her mobile phone,” he said.In fact, the last location of her mobile phone was traced to Guwahati on October 4. The STF and Rakhi's family kept believing that she was in Guwahati. However, after his arrest, Dr Singh confessed that he had sent the mobile phone to Guwahati through an aide, who dropped it there.Police say that Rakhi, a resident of Bichhiya area of Gorakhpur, came into contact with Dr Singh in 2006 when she brought her father Hareram Srivastava to him for treatment. Gradually, she developed intimacy with Dr Singh, who was already married. Dr Singh reportedly bought Rakhi a house in Shahpur area of Gorakhpur and even secretly married her in Gonda in 2011.However, when Dr Singh's wife Usha Singh came to know about her husband's secret wedding, she forced him to part ways with Rakhi.Meanwhile, Rakhi developed intimacy with Manish and married him in February 2016. However, she remained in touch with Dr Singh, say police. Quoting Dr Singh, they also say that she was pressuring him to transfer the ownership of Shahapur house in her name.During the Pokhra trip, when Rakhi came to know that Dr Singh would be visiting her, she sent her husband back. Dr Singh, who has confessed before STF that he had tried to kill her several times earlier as well, however, came this time with a pre-determined plan and executed it.“After the arrest of the three, we have recovered a Scorpio (UP-53CN 2843), voter ID card of Rakhi, Nepali mobile recharge card, two PAN cards, an ATM card and four mobile phones from their possession,” the IG said.