The Delhi crime branch has revealed several horrific details in the Anjan Das murder case. Earlier in the day, the Delhi Police crime branch arrested a woman in east Delhi’s Pandav Nagar for allegedly murdering her husband with the help of her son from a previous marriage. In eerie similarities with the Shraddha Walkar grisly murder, Das’ body was chopped up into 10 pieces by his wife and stepson, who then stored the dismembered body pieces in a fridge and disposed of them over several days.
Giving details of the horrific crime, Special CP Crime, Delhi, Ravinder Yadav said that Anjan Das was killed sometime before June 5 when a few of his mutilated body parts were found stuffed inside a bag at the Ramlila Ground in east Delhi’s Kalyanpuri.
Over the next few days, his legs, thighs, skull and forearm were recovered following which a case was registered under sections 302 (murder) and 201 (causing disappearance of evidence and giving false information) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) at Pandav Nagar Police Station.
Yadav further said that the accused had confessed to the crime. The accused Poonam, he said, was furious after she learnt that her husband Anjan Das had sold her jewellery and sent the money to his first wife, who lived in Bihar with their eight children. The Special CP Crime, Delhi further informed that the accused revealed that Anjan Das had ill intentions towards his stepdaughter and stepson’s wife, which is why they hatched the plan to kill him.
Poonam’s former husband died of cancer in 2017, after which she started living with Das. Deepak has told police that he agreed to the plan because Das allegedly harassed his wife.
The accused have told police that they murdered Das in June. They first spiked his drink and killed him once he was unconscious, police said. The duo then left the dead body in the house for an entire night so that the blood flowing out of the body to dry up. The next day, Deepak allegedly chopped up the body and packed the mutilated body parts in polythene packets which he stored in a fridge.
The duo subsequently disposed of the pieces, but a horrible odour began to emanate from the residence. To cover it up, the accused had their house painted, but residents complained to the police about the odour, prompting the police to initiate an investigation.
Following the recovery of body parts in June, police investigated the neighbourhood using CCTV footage and conducted door-to-door verification. The body was later recognised as that of Das’, leading investigators to Poonam and Deepak. Police grew suspicious of the two after discovering that Anjan Das had been missing for about six months, but the mother-son duo had not filed a missing person report for Das. Besides, there were anomalies in their statements when questioned.
Subsequently, they confessed to the killing, police said.
After being arrested from her house in Trilokpuri Monday, accused Poonam also admitted to the crime. She reportedly told the media, “He used to have ill intentions towards my children that’s why I did it. My son killed him with a knife, I didn’t do it.”
According to the police, Poonam was married off at the age of 14 to Sukhdev Tiwari, who eventually abandoned her and moved to Delhi. She, too, arrived in the city in search of her husband and found one Kallu, with whom she began a live-in relationship. She then met Das and fell in love with him. Kallu died in 2016 from liver failure, and she married Das the following year, in 2017.
According to the authorities, when Poonam married Das, she had no idea that the latter had a family in Bihar.
Das, a lift operator by profession, had previously sold Poonam’s jewellery and sent the money to his family in Bihar, the police further said, adding that the mother-son duo started plotting the murder in the month of March or April.
Police said they have recovered six pieces of the body so far.
Notably, CCTV footage provided by the criminal division showed the mother and her son entering and exiting an uninhabited plot of land at various times of day and night.
The method of operation in the aforementioned case is similar to that of the Shraddha Walkar murder case, wherein her live-in partner Aftab Amin Poonawala brutally strangulated her and later chopped her body into 35 pieces and dumped them at various locations in Delhi.