NEW DELHI: The Crime Branch probing the mysterious murder of Rohit Shekhar, on Wednesday arrested his wife Apoorva from his residence in South Delhi, an officer said.
Additional Commissioner of Police Rajiv Ranjan said, “We have arrested Apoorva with the help of scientific evidence and FSL report. She confessed that she has murdered her husband and cited unhappy marriage as the reason.”
“She entered Rohit’s room on April 16 and executed the crime. She later destroyed the evidences. All this happened within one-and-half hours,” said the officer, adding that she initially tried to mislead the Crime Branch team.
Rohit Shekhar died on April 16 under mysterious circumstances.
Earlier, Rohit Shekhar Tiwari’s wife Apoorva and two house helps had been taken into custody for questioning by the Delhi Police. Reports said the police were looking at Apoorva as the prime suspect in the murder case.
The Delhi Police on Thursday last registered a case of murder into the death of Rohit Shekhar, the son of former Uttar Pradesh chief minister and Congress stalwart ND Tiwari, hours after his autopsy report stated that he died after being strangled. The case has been transferred to the Crime Branch for investigation.
The Crime Branch had questioned Apoorva for over eight hours on Saturday at Rohit Shekhar’s residence in South Delhi’s Defence Colony area, they said.
On Sunday, Rohit Shekhar’s mother Ujjawla hit out at Apoorva and her parents alleging they had their eyes on his property.
“Apoorva’s family wanted to take control of the properties of my both sons – Siddharth and Rohit – because this house is nearer to the Supreme Court where Apoorva was practising law,” she said.
Refuting rumours that Rohit Shekhar and Apoorva met in the Supreme Court complex, Ujjawla said that they both had met in Lucknow through a matrimonial website in 2017.
They were seeing each other for a year and later took a break in between. Rohit Shekhar maintained distance from her and said he did not want to marry her, she said.
They were not in touch from January to March, 2018. But on April 2 they came to me and expressed their wish to get married, Ujjwala said.
They also discussed mutual divorce several times and later decided to end their marriage in June, she added.
Ujjwala said Apoorva was also against giving a share of property to son of Rajiv Kumar, a relative and aide of Mr Tiwari.
Apoorva always had issues with Rajiv and his wife, Ujjawla said, adding that reports of Rohit Shekhar having affair with Rajiv’s wife is “baseless and false”.
“My elder son Siddharth expressed his wish to give a share to Rajiv’s son Kartik Raj but Apoorva was disappointed and expressed her displeasure over this,” she said. (Agencies)