A 23-year-old woman allegedly conspired with her paramour to get her husband killed in Madhya Pradesh's Bhind district and staged the crime as a robbery, police said, days after a similar case surfaced in Dhar.
The crime was committed in an area under the Ater police station, they said.
The accused woman, Ruby, and her lover, Vishal Vimal (21), have been taken into custody, while another person who allegedly assisted in the murder is on the run, Superintendent of Police (SP) Asit Yadav told reporters on Saturday.
On April 8, police were informed that unidentified robbers had shot dead one Nilesh Jatav (27) in front of his wife Ruby and their child while he was riding a motorcycle.
Ruby told the police that they were returning from village Jamna to Kharika when her bag fell on the Ridoli-Kharika road.
She claimed that as her husband stopped the motorcycle and she went to pick up the bag, two unidentified men arrived from behind, shot her husband and fled, Yadav said.
Police launched a probe after registering a murder case against unidentified persons.
“During the investigation, the wife's statements appeared suspicious. Police then questioned her using psychological methods, which led to the case being solved,” the SP said.
Ruby had been in a relationship with Vimal, a relative, for nearly seven years, and they remained in constant touch through WhatsApp calls and chats, he said.
The woman felt her husband had become an obstacle in their relationship, the official said.
As per the plan, the woman deliberately dropped her bag at a predetermined spot while travelling with her husband on the motorcycle and asked him to stop. When Jatav stopped the two-wheeler, Vimal and his associate allegedly shot him dead.
The police have seized a 12-bore country-made pistol, empty cartridges, a motorcycle without a registration number and mobile phones from the arrested accused, the official said.
Rajesh Kushwah, who allegedly assisted in the crime, is still on the run and efforts are being made to trace him.
In a similar recent case in the state's Dhar district, a woman allegedly conspired with her paramour and hired a contract killer to eliminate her husband. She also had initially tried to project the incident as a robbery before confessing during questioning.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
