A Jharkhand man, accused of murdering two women over what police described as a case of “revenge over a love affair”, died by suicide on Tuesday following his arrest, officials said.
Shrikant Choudhary was accused of strangling Soni Devi (23), with whom he was in a relationship, and also of killing her friend Rinku Devi, who was the only eyewitness in the case, police said.
The women had been missing since Thursday and Choudhary, a resident of Kharsan village, was arrested on Monday, police said. After his arrest, he took the police to Golgo Pahari forest, near Nimadih village in Jharkhand’s Giridih district, where he had hidden the women’s bodies.
Sub Divisional Police Officer Rajendra Prasad told The Indian Express that after Choudhary was brought back to the local police station, a crowd gathered outside.
“Villagers, especially women, gathered outside the police station demanding that the accused be handed over to them. They said he had killed two women and should be killed in the same way. They threatened that if handed over, they would kill him and go to jail themselves. The situation became tense, but we managed to pacify the crowd,” Prasad said.
The SDPO said that he then left the police station to attend a press conference. “By the time I returned, I was informed that the accused had hanged himself in the lockup with a cable wire and a flag rope. When discovered, he was still alive and was rushed first to a local health centre and later to Sadar Hospital, about 70 km away. He died there during treatment,” Prasad said.
Choudhary’s death, the SDPO said, was “completely unexpected”.
“We could not imagine he would take such a decision. He had listened to villagers saying that even if he came out alive, they would kill him,” Prasad said.
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According to the officer, Choudhary had been in a relationship with Soni Devi for two years. The woman, in her third marriage, had a husband lodged in jail in a murder case. “Choudhary suspected her of having relationships with other men. He came back from Mumbai, where he worked in the film industry, and killed her in the forest by strangulation as a form of revenge. To erase evidence, he also killed her companion, a middle-aged woman with seven children,” he said.
“This was not the first time they had met (in the forest). They used to meet like this every time, and Rinku Devi would wait outside the forest to help the couple by informing them if anyone approached,” the SDPO said.
According to police, villagers had earlier warned Choudhary against the relationship and fined him over Rs 1 lakh, but the affair continued.
Prasad denied that there was any custodial violence against Choudhary and said the National Human Rights Commission may conduct an inquiry.
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“No one can say the police killed him. It was his own act. Legally, too, until the FIR was registered, he could not be kept in the formal lockup. He used the small window of time when officers were occupied with crowd control,” he said.
