Killer failed to cover tracks

NEW DELHI: While the city celebrated the festival of love on Tuesday, the east Delhi police were dealing with a gory murder of a loved one. A plumber had bludgeoned his wife to death, cut the body into pieces with a saw and hung the head from a peg in his room in Madhu Vihar locality.The murder was discovered after the body started stinking prompting the neighbours to call the cops. The accused, Subodh Kumar, 40, had apparently slept with his dead wife by his side for three days before buying a saw on Tuesday and cutting up the body to dump it somewhere.While being questioned by the neighbours, Kumar admitted to murdering his wife. Cops then forcibly entered the house and arrested him. Police said Kumar lived with his wife Manisha and two daughters, aged nine and 12, in Chander Vihar. Two days before the murder, he had sent the daughters to his inlaws' house in Ranchi, indicating that he was planning the crime for some time. "We had often found them fighting and Subodh often thrashed Manisha and his daughters," said Aarti, a neighbour. During interrogation, Kumar confessed to having married a second time six months ago, just before shifting to the Chander Vihar flat. The woman, Munia, had moved into a room adjacent to the house.Police said Manisha had come to know about the marriage and had told Kumar she wanted a divorce. On Saturday, the day of the murder, the couple had fought again. "When we questioned Subodh on Tuesday, he told us he had killed his wife and kept the body in the house. He then asked us to stay away from his personal problems and went back into the house," a neighbour said. It was then that the residents decided to call the police, he added. "We have registered a case of murder and attempt to destroy evidence against Subodh," said Omvir Singh, DCP east.Kumar told police that he had planned to eliminate Manisha and sent his daughters away.He deliberately picked up a fight with his wife on Saturday night and repeatedly hit her on the head with a pipe used for plumbing. When Manisha stopped breathing, Subodh cleaned the wounds, placed the body on the bed and covered it with a quilt. He then had dinner and slept next to the body.The next morning, Kumar told cops that he had tried to drag the body out but found the lane outside the house very crowded. Police said the killer tried again on Monday but feared he would get caught.Kumar told interrogators that the body started rotting by Monday night. He tried to cover the windows of his room with pieces of cloth to prevent the smell from spreading out, but it was too strong. Neighbours found out about the body on Tuesday afternoon when Subodh had opened the door to sweep the floor.The body was sent for an autopsy at the Lal Bahadur Shastri hospital. Police will contact Kumar's 'second wife' Munia to see if she was involved in the murder plan.