KOLKATA: A 23-year-old woman, along with her UAE-based lover, murdered her husband, dumped his body in a drain and then tried to pass it off as an accident, saying he must have had fallen down in a drunken stupor, police said on Friday. Both the accused—Sonali Kumari and Arshad Jamil—later confessed to the crime and were arrested.

The body of Nirmal Kumar, station manager (operations) based out of

railway station, was found in a drain near his Rainagar home a little after 11.30pm on November 10. Kumar, originally from

’s Bhagalpur, had taken up the Diamond Harbour assignment in July 2018 and rented out a two-room home in Rainagar. He mostly stayed alone, but when he returned from

after the Chhath break, his wife, Sonali, and their one-and-a-half-year-old daughter also came along with him. A brother of Sonali also accompanied them to Diamond Harbour, but he was not involved in the crime.

It was Sonali who pretended to first spot her husband’s body in the drain and alerted the cops. She told police she suspected Kumar must have had slipped and fallen in the drain in a drunken state. The cops sent the body for post-mortem and registered a case of unnatural death. “The post-mortem report revealed the victim had been strangled. His body was thrown into the drain so that it bloated and decomposed fast to obliterate the strangulation marks,” said Md Omar Farooq, Diamond Harbour police station OC.

During investigation, cops found a nylon rope in the room. They also scanned Sonali’s call records, which showed that she was in touch with Jamil, a Munger resident who worked in the UAE as an instrumentation engineer.

“Sonali initially tried to mislead us. But her call detail record was a big giveaway. When confronted with Jamil’s name, she broke down and confessed that the two of them had hatched the plot and murdered Kumar,” said an investigator. She told police that before her marriage, she and Jamil were in love but her family refused to accept the relationship and married her off to Kumar. Even after her marriage, the two of them kept in touch. Kumar till recently was apparently unaware of their affair but learnt about it when he came across her mobile texts, she told cops. Angry, Kumar decided that Sonali should leave Munger, where she mostly lived, and stay with him at Diamond Harbour. Accordingly, the entire family returned to Diamond Harbour after Chhath.

But before that, Jamil flew back to Munger from the UAE ahead of the Pujas, when he and Sonali hatched the plot to murder Kumar, police said. After Sonali returned to Diamond Harbour, Jamil also came to the city and put up at a distant relative’s place. According to their plan, late on November 10, Sonali left Kumar in the bedroom, went to another room with her daughter and called up Jamil. A little later, Jamil came in, entered Kumar’s room and with Sonali’s help, strangled him with a nylon rope, said police. He then reportedly dragged the body and threw it in the drain.

“Both were questioned and they confessed to the crime,” said Diamond Harbour police superintendent Bholanath Pandey, adding Jamil was arrested from Kolkata late on Thursday. They reportedly told police they had planned to wait till Sonali could claim Kumar’s service benefits. With Jamil’s Rs 1.8-lakh salary a month in the UAE and Kumar’s benefits, the couple had planned to settle down there, away from the law here, police said.