Srinagar, Jun 09: Police had claimed solving the murder case of one Abiroo Shafi Bhat of Khwajapora, Nowgam, allegedly by his wife and her paramour, a firebrand cleric (Moulvi), on the intervening night of March 10.
In a statement issued here today, police said “the wife, Asifa, daughter of Muhammad Abdullah Dar of Aloochi Bagh, had on the morning of March 11 called her brother-in-law, who lives next door, and told him that his brother (her husband) was not waking up from sleep.”
She had also informed up her parents and father-in-law about it.
The couple and their seven-year-old daughter lived separately and on the fateful night, the child was left with her maternal grandparents at Aloochi Bagh.
The family buried Abiroo Shafi believing that he had died of natural causes. Many ascribed it to heart attack although he had no history of heart ailment or any major disease, police statement said.
According to police, those who gave the funeral bath to his dead-body, said that the body had become very stiff and was unusually cold. They had noticed some marks on the neck but could not suspect any foul play.
However, family members and those who came to console with the family began asking various questions regarding the sudden and untimely death of Abiroo.
His wife Asifa was asked about the Whatsapp and Facebook applications which were missing from the phone of the deceased, even when he had sent Whatsapp message to a friend a few hours before his death?
“One of her uncles had even asked Asifa how was it that she didn’t feel even for a second that she was sleeping next to a dead body through the entire night?” police statement says while giving details about the case.
It was this query that agitated Asifa so much so that she told her mother to ask her brother “not to come here again”.
According to police there were other red flags as well that made the family members increasingly suspicious about Asifa as she didn’t behave the way a wife would after losing a husband with whom she had lived for 12 years.
“They were not only married for 12 years but had been in a relationship for several years before marriage also. They had gotten married despite objections by their families. Effectively, they had been together for more than half of their lives. Both were in their mid-thirties,” police said.
It said before being arrested by the police, while the family was mourning, the wife had also sold off a golden bangle that was a gift from her husband.
“From the third day of her husband’s death, she had been using her phones a lot, which was thought of unbecoming for a widow,” police said.
It said the family’s suspicion intensified when the co-accused in the murder, Moulvi Tanveer Bhat (Lelhari), son of Ali Muhammad Bhat of Lelhar, Pulwama, visited the family on the third day of Abiroo’s death and delivered a moving sermon to the mourners.
According to the family, the Moulvi then went to the women’s tent to condole the widow and her mother. The family said he had hugged them both, police said.
“As the family’s suspicion grew, they had called the woman’s father, brother and uncles and talked about her behaviour. They also told them about certain events in the past that pointed to her extra-marital indiscretions,” police statement said.
Then on May 14, deceased Abiroo’s father Muhammad Shafi Bhat, filed a formal complaint with the police station Nowgam, about the foul play they suspected in the death of his son. On the basis of this complaint, inquest proceedings under section 174 CrPC were registered and investigations initiated.
On May 26, 2018, a team of forensic experts from the forensic department of the Government Medical College Srinagar and doctors from Health department exhumed Abiroo’s body and conducted the autopsy. Although the final report is yet to be received but the initial findings revealed that the prima facie cause of death is strangulation.
The police registered a case FIR No. 52/2018 under 302 RPC and during investigation police called Moulvi Tanveer for questioning. Initially he denied everything and the call records of the SIM he was using did not yield much information. Neither did the phone of Asifa, the wife of deceased that she had been using, yield anything significant, police said.
However, a few days before his murder, the deceased had passed a certain phone number to his cousin and asked him to fetch its details. The cousin shared the same number with the police, which was traced to Moulvi.
Further investigation revealed that the wife of the deceased had been using the SIM of one Suhail of Lelhar Pulwama, who happens to be the Moulvi’s cousin. This SIM card was provided to her by Moulvi and she used it to communicate with him from her marital and maternal homes.
Police said after the murder, Moulvi had gone into hiding and the duo had changed their SIM cards. “Moulvi had obtained a new SIM card in the name of one Rouf Sadiq of Nowgam for ease of communication with the lady,” police said.
“Finally, when Moulvi was arrested, he confessed to the crime. The police recovered a broken cellphone which the wife of deceased had thrown out from the window of the house of her brother-in-law where the family was mourning. Another broken phone was recovered near her parents’ house in Aloochibagh. These were the phones she had been using to communicate with her paramour and also one mobile phone was recovered from the possession of paramour Moulvi,” police said.
It said during investigation, it came to light that Asifa was caught red handed by her husband while talking to Moulvi on phone, a day before he gave the number to one of his cousins for fetching details.
“The wife feeling annoyed and angered at this behavior, proceeded to her maternal home and called up Moulvi. The duo hatched a conspiracy to kill Abiroo Shafi and as per plan the wife kept her minor girl child at maternal home,” police said.
“The murder plan was executed between 12 and 12.30 am on the night of March 10 after the wife gave a glass of milk stupefied with sedatives to the deceased. The Moulvi jumped over the wall of the house and entered inside the room through a window, which had been left open by the wife of the deceased.
“When Abiroo was in deep slumber and too sedated to resist, Moulvi strangulated him with the assistance of deceased’s wife Asifa. The Moulvi stayed in the house till early morning before jumping out of the same wall. He then took train from Nowgam railway station for his home at Pulwama,” police said.
It said in their confession, the both Asifa and Moulvi said they were planning to marry and had been in relationship for more than a year.
“The Moulvi, who was very popular in the locality, used to deliver Friday sermons in the nearby mosque and the deceased had invited him for lunch on several occasions. The deceased had probably got a whiff of the illicit relationship between the two and had informed the local head of Jamiat-e-Ahli Hadees, Abdul Qayoom about Moulvi’s behavior,” police said.
The Moulvi, who also taught in a private school in Pampore, had been asked not to deliver sermons thereafter.
During investigation, the police found that the Moulvi had inquired from a few locals as to who is pursuing the case in the family. He had also confessed to the crime before a few of them. Subsequently, the wife also was arrested and she too confessed to the conspiracy and murder, police said.
It said the accused wopman (Asifa) has been sent to judicial custody at Central Jail Srinagar while as Moulvi is still under police custody with Police Station Nowgam.
The father of the deceased, Muhammad Shafi, other relatives and several locals visited the police station a few times and thanked SHO Showkat Ahmad and his team for swift and persistent investigation into the crime, police statement said.
