Doctor kills partner, keeps her social media accounts running for months

A leading doctor here and two others have been arrested for allegedly murdering his partner in Nepal and keeping her social media and WhatsApp accounts active for seven months to deceive her family, police said.

Dr D P Singh and his two accomplices were arrested on Friday from Daudpur for allegedly killing Rajeshwari alias Rakhi Srivastava, Special Task Force Inspector General (IG) Amitabh Yash said.

Singh is the director of a hospital in Gorakhpur and both his accomplices -- Pramod Kumar Singh and Deshdeepak Nishad -- are his employees, he said.

On June 24, the victim's brother, Amar Prakash Srivastav, lodged a complaint against Rajeshwari's second husband Manish Sinha at Shahpur police station under sections 366 (kidnapping), 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code, the IG said.

It became clear earlier this month that Singh and his accomplices had killed Rajeshwari in Nepal in June, Yash said.

They went to Nepal on June 4 and returned on June 6 after killing Rajeshwari. The accused had offered her a sedative-laced drink before pushing her off a hill in Nepal's Kaski district, he said.

On June 8, the woman's body was recovered by the Nepal police, he added.

The accused kept Rajeshwari virtually alive for seven months. They kept her WhatsApp running and updated her social media account, Yash said.

According to police, Rajeshwari met Singh in 2011 and they got married the same year. Singh was already married.

Later the couple started having frequent arguments and Rajeshwari even lodged a rape case against Singh at Cant police station in Gorakhpur, they said.

In February 2018, Rajeshwari married Sinha, a native of Bihar's Gaya district, and went to Nepal with him, the IG said.

Sinha returned to India on June 3 but Rajeshwari stayed back, Yash said.

Later, when Sinha tried calling his wife, she did not answer her phone but her WhatsApp account remained active. Her account only became non-operational on October 4 at around 11.30 pm, he said.

During interrogation, Singh and his accomplices admitted to have killed Rajeshwari, he said.

Singh told police that Rajeshwari lived in a house in Nepal which he had bought. He decided to kill her as she would repeatedly ask him to transfer the ownership of the property in her name.