Mumbai:
A 10-year-long marriage ends in tragedy, as the 30-year-old husband is found dead on isolated grounds with injury marks over the body. Friends and relatives naturally sympathise with the young widow. That is till her actual role in the denouement comes to the fore. Cops from Ulhasnagar crime branch have arrested a 25-year-old woman who hired a hit man to get her spouse killed. To mislead the police, she filed a complaint claiming her husband had gone missing and later got a murder case lodged against unknown persons after the body was found.
Shivaji Nagar police had recovered the corpse of an unknown person with injury marks all over at Ambernath MIDC area on January 29. They immediately started checking all the missing complaints and learnt that a 30-year-old who was an electrician and a resident of Manish Nagar in Ulhasnagar was missing and a complaint had been lodged by his wife at Central police station.
"When the wife Preeti Krishnachand Mishra (25), was called she identified the body as that of her husband Krishnachand," said Machindra Chavan, senior police inspector of Ulhasnagar crime branch.
In further investigations, police started questioning Preeti who frequently changed her statements.
"When we inquired about Preeti from her neighbours they told us that some people had seen her roaming around with a 22-year-old youth Jishan Munnar Shaikh, a student of BCom third year," said Chavan.
"Shaikh was then summoned by the Crime Branch and during questioning he broke down and accepted that he and Preeti had given a supari of Rs 1 lakh to one Akshay Suresh Gaikwad to kill Krishnachand," said Milind Bharambe, additional commissioner of police (crime), Thane.
Akshay's father Suresh Gaikwad is an ex-corporator and is now contesting municipal elections from Ulhasnagar on a Congress ticket.
Akshay, along with aides Jaysingh Mudaliyar and Damodar Hadalke met Krishnachand on January 28. They drank wine at Bittu Bar in Ulhasnagar and later went to the MIDC area, where the trio stabbed Krishnachand at an isolated place and killed him.
"Preeti had sold all her jewellery to arrange the contract killing of her husband. Preeti was in love with Jishan and was bored with her 10-year-old relationship with her husband who had started drinking," said Meghshyam Dange, police inspector of crime branch.
The miscreants were arrested yesterday and are in police custody.