Lucknow police, on Saturday, arrested a 39-year-old man for killing his 30-year-old live-in-partner. The couple had been staying together for over a year in Lucknow’s PGI area. The man who is already married, allegedly killed the woman after she pressured him to marry her, said police.
The accused identified as Girija Shankar crushed the woman under the wheels of his car and then fled while staging it as an accident. The police also seized the vehicle used in the crime.
On Friday morning, a woman’s body was found on the road near Defense Expo Ground in the PGI area. Police, which reached the spot after getting information from the locals, took her to the hospital where the doctors declared her dead on arrival.
The woman was identified as Geeta Sharma, 30, a resident of Rae Bareli and she was staying at the Nilgiri Apartments in Lucknow. There were injury marks on the woman’s head and other parts of the body. The postmortem report also showed ante-mortem injuries. Police registered a murder case and on Saturday, they detained Girja Shankar on the basis of allegations and suspicion. Shankar later confessed to the crime.
“The man and the woman were natives of the same place in Rae Bareli and were staying as live-in partners in Lucknow. For a year, the duo had an ongoing dispute over multiple things. The accused man is already married and the deceased was putting pressure on the accused to marry her,” said Pankaj Singh, additional deputy commissioner of police (East). “The accused is said to be an advocate. However, it is yet to be confirmed,” the ADCP added.
“Due to Girija’s bad image, no one talked to him,’’ said the deceased woman’s brother Lalchand, adding that Geeta used to work with Girja in property business in Lucknow. Geeta also used to come home very rarely. “There was an insurance of ₹one crore rupees in Geeta’s name, in which Girija Shankar was the nominee. This murder took place to grab the insurance amount,” victim’s brother alleged.
The ADCP said that on Thursday night, Girija took Geeta for a long drive. “He somehow convinced her to get down from the car at a secluded stretch in the PGI area and then hit her twice,” said the ADCP.
According to police, on Friday morning around 9.30 am, Girija called from an unknown number and told her brother Lalchand that Geeta had met with an accident.
“After some time, he reached my house in Rae Bareli in his SUV and made me sit in the car and told me that Geeta died in an accident. I had doubts about his role as earlier the police asked me to reach Lucknow and I was told that Geeta was being treated in PGI. This raised doubts as to how Girija knew about Geeta’s death beforehand. How did he reach Rae Bareli within a few hours of the incident,” said the brother.
According to the brother, Girja Shankar also got some repair work done in his car and refused to answer the details.
According to police, Geeta and Girija had a dispute regarding money transactions. Lalchand said that Girja had married twice. He had divorced his first wife and later he married again. His second wife lives in Rae Bareli while he lived with Geeta in Lucknow.