Husband kills wife: Murder for insurance

Unlike the fires, floods cannot be ‘man-made’ but ‘losses’ due to the natural calamity can be inflated many times over. And now, it is life insurance claim in lieu of dowry not received.

That’s exactly what is indicated by the recent murder of a young woman in Surat by her husband after insuring her life for Rs 63 lakhs. Married to transporter Anuj in 2017, Shalini faced harassments at her in-laws’ place for not bringing any dowry. The issue also led to a fisticuff between Anuj and his father-in-law last year.

On return to Surat, Anuj got his wife Shalini’s life insured for Rs 63 lakhs. Anuj lodged a complaint with the police that his wife was crushed to death while they were out for morning walk on 8 January around 5.30 a.m.

The husband’s contention that he could not see the vehicle that crushed her was believable as sunrise presently in Gujarat is only around 7.05 a.m. The police had nearly accepted the ‘accident’ theory but Shalini’s father Dhaniram Yadav telling them about the fisticuff over dowry and the subsequent Rs 63 lakh insurance policy proved unlucky for Anuj.

Further investigations and intense interrogation of Anuj revealed that Shalini was first strangulated to death and then her body was crushed under a truck in the service lane of a road in Surat. It turned out that Shalini was turned to death so that Anuj could claim the insurance amount. In a case of similar nature, a 12-year-old orphan boy was ‘adopted’ by three Non-Resident Indians only to claim insurance money by getting him killed.

Source: The statesman