Woman held for husband’s murder plot

Banka: Rajnandini Singh, 27, was arrested on Wednesday night for hatching a conspiracy of murdering her husband.

In her confessional statement, Rajnandini said she wanted to live the rest of her life with her old lover after eliminating her husband. The plan was to murder Bijay Singh (30) when he was on the Kanwariya Path after fetching Ganga jal from Sultanganj.

On the morning of July 27, the stabbed body of a kanwariya was recovered beside Kanwaria Path at Nimatard under Suia police station of Banka. The deceased was identified as Bijay of Burnpur in Bengal who was on way to Deoghar. The police had registered a case against unidentified criminals, said Vikash Vaibhav, deputy inspector-general of police (DIG), Bhagalpur range, who was monitoring the case.

According to Vaibhav, on the basis of investigations, police arrested two persons, the brother-in-laws of the deceased, Akash Kumar and Vipin Kumar, from Hevali Kharaghpur in Munger and sent them to jail. “After further investigations, we found out that Rajnandini, the wife of the deceased, was the actual culprit,” he said.

A Special Investigation Team (SIT) was constituted under the leadership of MM Alam, inspector of police, Katoria police station (Banka) and the team arrested Rajnandini from Burnpur.

She was forwarded to judicial custody at Banka jail. In her confession, she said how she was busy from the evening of July 26 till late night on her mobile phone with her husband to know his location on the Kanwariya Path.

She subsequently was transferring all information about the location of her husband to Gulshan Kumar, her former lover. Gulshan and others were waiting to murder Bijoy when he was crossing Suia, an isolated place with forests and mountains at night.

“Police managed to find out the call record details of the cellphones and solved the mystery within three days,” the DIG said.

Rajnandini said she had fallen in love with Gulshan, a friend of her elder brother Arun Kumar, who used to operate an earthmover at Howrah in Bengal. Due to social stigma, the parents of Rajnandini were not ready to accept Gulshan as their son-in-law and so she was married off to Bijay Singh on February 10, 2018.

“Even after marriage, Rajnandini continued her relationship with Gulshan and the duo frequently used to talk on the mobile phone. Gulshan was angry with the marriage of Rajnandini with Bijay and vowed to kill him. He, along with Rajnandini’s brothers, hatched a plan to kill Bijay,” said a policeman at Katoria police station.

However, Vaibhav said the other co-accused Gulshan and his associate Monti alias Manish Singh have not been arrested but a police team is camping in Calcutta.

Courtesy: The Telegraph