Rohit Shekhar's wife murdered him because of unhappy marriage, says Delhi Police; claims she tampered with evidence

The Delhi Police on Wednesday made the first arrest in the alleged murder case of Rohit Shekhar, son of late senior Congress politician ND Tiwari. After three days of interrogations, the Delhi Police arrested Rohit’s wife Apoorva Tiwari for his murder. Police said that she had admitted to the crime. [caption id=“attachment_1491627” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] File image of ND Tiwari and Rohit Shekhar. PTI[/caption] Investigators had been treating the case as one of unnatural death after his autopsy report revealed he died of “asphyxia”, that he was strangled and smothered to death. She entered Rohit’s room on 16 April and executed the crime. She later destroyed the evidences. All this happened within one-and-half hours. She confessed to murder," senior police officer Rajiv Ranjan told reporters in New Delhi. According to the police, Rohit had gone to Uttarakhand to cast his vote and had returned to Delhi on the night of 15 April. In one of the seven CCTVs in and around his Defence Colony residence, Rohit could be seen taking support of the wall as he walked. He was reportedly in an inebriated state when he returned home on 15. The next day on 16 April, Rohit’s mother Ujjwala Tiwari was at the Max Hospital for treatment when she received a call from Rohit’s residence saying that Rohit was unwell and bleeding from his nose. She then took an ambulance and brought Rohit to the hospital. He was declared brought dead  at the hospital. The police also said that the cause of death was strangulation. The police had been questioning Apoorva since Sunday. A senior police official said they had found discrepancies in her statements, which led the police to suspect her involvement. On 18 April, the Delhi Police had registered a case of murder based on the autopsy report and transferred the case to the Crime Branch. Rohit’s mother Ujjwala had also alleged that Apoorva and her family were “money minded” and wanted to acquire the family property. She had claimed that the couple had been having fights since the first day of marriage, also denying reports of Rohit having an affair. “Apoorva’s family wanted to take control of the properties of my both sons Siddharth and Rohit because this house is close to the Supreme Court, where Apoorva is practising law,” Ujjwala said, adding that Apoorva had expressed displeasure over the fact that Rohit’s brother Siddharth wanted to give another family relative, Karthik, a share of the property. India Today reported that Rohit and Apoorva had met through a matrimonial site in 2017 and got married on 12 May, 2018, but Apoorva moved back to her parents’ house after they began to have frequent fights. She had reportedly returned to Rohit’s house on 30 March. Rohit’s father, Narayan Dutt Tiwari died at the age of 93 on 18 October, his birthday, last year. He, too, had been undergoing treatment at Saket Hospital for age-related complications. The Congress veteran, who had served in various positions at the Centre, was the chief of minister of Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh. Rohit had joined the BJP ahead of the 2017 Uttarakhand Assembly polls and had recently indicated that he would join the Congress. With inputs from PTI