Days after a man's rotting body was found in a blue drum in Rajasthan's Alwar, his 8-year-old son has emerged as a crucial witness to the case in which his mother and her alleged lover are the prime accused. He said the drum was used to store water and that he saw the accused putting his father's body in it.
Speaking to NDTV, victim Hansraj's eldest son, Harshal, also revealed what transpired in his home in Kishangarh before and after the murder.
"My father, mother and uncle (their landlord's son) were drinking together. My mother only had a couple of pegs, but the uncle who killed my father drank a lot. And so did my father, after which he started beating my mother. My uncle tried to intervene, but my father said, 'If you save her, I will kill you also, '" said the child.
"Then uncle attacked my father," he said.
Then his mother asked him to go to sleep.
"When I woke up, I saw my father on the bed, then I went back to sleep, but again when I woke up, I saw uncle and my mother. They got scared because the landlord started asking for my father and threatened to go to the police, that's why uncle took us to a brick kiln," he said.
"But the brick kiln owner called the police, who took us away," he added.
The drum, he said, was used to fill water.
"They threw the water and put papa's body in the drum and placed it in the kitchen," he said.
"I asked them why they were doing this, then they said papa has died".
The police said that when Hansraj got too drunk, the accused smothered him with a pillow.
Harshal also disclosed that his father used to thrash her mother and burn her with cigarettes frequently. He alleged that his father tried to slash his throat with a blade.
"He used to beat my mother frequently. He used to burn her with beedi (cigarette). He also used to beat me. In fact, on August 15, he attacked my neck with a blade," he said.
As per police sources, the man was allegedly murdered on August 15.
The man's body was found on the first floor of a rented house when his landlady, an elderly woman, noticed a foul smell coming from the drum. She informed the police, who came to the spot and opened the sealed blue drum, which had Hansraj's decomposing body inside.
Police said that Hansraj's wife Sunita and her boyfriend first killed him and then put salt in the drum to melt the corpse.
The man from Uttar Pradesh used to work at a brick kiln in Alwar. He had taken the room on rent a few months ago. After the murder, his wife, three children -- 8-year-old Harshal and his 3-year-old and 6-month-old sisters -- and the landlady's son were missing.
After a tip-off, the police arrested them from a brick kiln, 50 km away from the scene of the crime. The victim's wife was allegedly in a relationship with the landlady's son, Jitendra Sharma. They had gone to the kiln to seek work. Sharma's wife had died a few years ago.
According to the police, Sunita and Jitendra Sharma were in a relationship for the last four months. Hansraj had come to know about it some time ago. After this, he used to fight with Sunita every day. Upset by the daily fights, Sunita and Jitendra planned to get Hansraj out of the way.
They were arrested by the police on a tip-off from the brick kiln owner.
The children will be handed over to their paternal grandparents.
Harshal told NDTV that "uncle Jitendra Sharma used to help" them, which led to frequent fights between his parents.
"I was admitted to school by him. My father got angry that uncle had got my admission done and he started beating my mother. Then, uncle came to save my mother," he said.
The murder brings back memories of a similar murder in Uttar Pradesh's Meerut, where a man was allegedly killed by his wife and her lover. They then chopped up the body into pieces and buried them under wet cement in a drum. The murder plot was revealed over a haunting statement repeatedly said bt the victim's daughter - "Papa drum mein hain".
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