india

Updated: Apr 21, 2019 08:28 IST

The wife of Rohit Shekhar Tiwari — the son of former Uttar Pradesh chief minister ND Tiwari — who is believed to have been murdered earlier this week, is among five people who were inside the house at the time of the incident and are now under the police’s scanner. Shekhar was found dead on Tuesday and the report of an autopsy on Friday said there were signs that he died of asphyxiation, leading police to open a murder investigation.

On Saturday, Shekhar’s wife Apoorva and his half-brother Siddharth were questioned by police, who are working on several angles and “strange circumstances” to determine what took place at the victim’s Defence Colony residence on Monday night – the approximate time the murder took place according to the autopsy.

“It is important to question all those who were present in the house because there are many strange facts. The autopsy says Shekhar was murdered around midnight on Monday. He was found unconscious at around 4pm on Tuesday. The air conditioner of the room was switched on all this while. Also, nobody tried to wake him up for 16-17 hours while he lay dead in his room? Maybe not illegal but these circumstances are strange,” a police officer aware of the investigations said, asking not to be named.

Shekhar’s mother Ujjwala Devi Sharma, who returned to the capital on Friday night along with Apoorva after the family went to Haridwar for the funeral ceremony, said relations between the couple had been strained, news agency PTI reported.

Shekhar and Apoorva married in 2018, Shekhar’s father-in-law told PTI. “My daughter cannot do something like this. When I got to know about his death, I came down here. Police are probing the matter and soon we will know how he died.”

Shekhar’s mother also told the news agency that her son was apparently upset over his political career, according to the PTI.

Police registered a case of murder on Friday after an autopsy by a team of doctors at All India Institute of Medical Sciences said the 39-year-old was smothered with a pillow. He was found on Tuesday by a household help and taken to Max Super Specialty Hospital where he was declared dead.

Shekhar, an advocate, had fought a legal battle with ND Tiwari to prove that he was the late veteran politician’s biological son. In 2014, a paternity test decided the case in Shekhar’s favour, following which the three-time Uttar Pradesh chief minister publicly accepted him as his son.

The case is being investigated by the crime branch of the police.