A man allegedly killed his live-in partner in Maharashtra’s Palghar district and hid her body in a bed storage area before fleeing their rented home, reported The Indian Express on Thursday.
The man, Hardik Shah, the son of a diamond merchant, however, could not escape as he was detained at the Nagda railway junction in Madhya Pradesh and arrested by the Mumbai Police a day later. He has been sent to police custody till February 21.
Senior Inspector Shailendra Nagarkar said that Shah had killed his live-in partner Megha Torvi on February 11.
Shah, who had failed to clear his Class 10 exams, was unemployed and Torvi, who worked as a nurse, reportedly bore the household expenses. This led to frequent quarrels between the couple which resulted in the murder, the police said, according to NDTV.
The couple had been living together in a flat in the Nalasopara town near Mumbai.
Nagarkar said that after killing Torvi, Shah did not have any money to buy a train ticket to Rajasthan so he decided to sell items in his home to a scrap dealer.
“The scrap dealer came to the house on Sunday and paid him [Shah] Rs 4,500 for the articles he bought, unaware that the only bed that was not up for sale had a body inside,” the police officer added.
After getting the money, Shah left for Rajasthan and told a relative of Torvi that her body was in the bed storage and that he would die by suicide, according to The Indian Express.
The relative then called the broker who got the couple the flat. He then called the police who broke open the door of the house and found the body. By the time the police reached the house, the neighbours had already started complaining of a foul smell emanating from the flat.
Nagarkar said that Shah’s father had thrown him out of the house after he had fled with cash and valuables worth lakhs from their home.
“However, when he did not have anywhere to go during the Covid-19 pandemic, his father took him back,” the officer said. “But then Shah started harassing his parents again as per their statement.”
The incident comes on the heels of another murder in Delhi where a man identified as Sahil Gehlot had allegedly killed his live-in partner, Nikki Yadav, and stuffed her body in a fridge at his family’s restaurant. Gehlot had allegedly killed Yadav after she found out that he was going marry another woman.
In November, another Delhi resident, Aftab Poonawala, was arrested for allegedly having killed his live-in partner Shraddha Walkar. The police have said that Poonawala chopped her body into several pieces before throwing the body parts at different places in the city over several days.
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