LUCKNOW: There is no bigger reward for a probe team than to see an investigation done by the book bear results. The story began on the morning of January 7 with a chance discovery and a cop’s curious mind.
A police patrol team in UP’s Hardoi district on that day stumbled upon a tuft of a long hair and some burnt pieces of clothing, visibly of a woman’s, in an area that shares a border with the neighbouring Sitapur district.
It was windy in the Shahpur Binora area of Hardoi’s Haryawan and the articles could have well flown over from Sitapur’s side.
Hardoi superintendent of police Rajesh Dwivedi, “Suspecting foul play, the strands of hair and pieces of burnt clothes were sent for a forensic examination.”
In the absence of any missing person’s report that could match the profile of the woman as determined by the forensic experts from the recovered items, police went back to traditional ways of probe.
Among the network of police informers, one mentioned the mysterious disappearance of one Afreen, said the SP.
A team got on the case and first traced the family of the missing woman. “We found her father Amjad, who told us that he had not heard from his daughter for almost five days,” said the officer.
The remains were shown to him and he recognised it to be of his daughter’s and lodged a case of murder against his son-in-law Sharafat Ali, said the police. “The team picked up Shrafat for questioning who initially tried to fob off the interrogators but soon gave in and spilled the beans,” Haryawan SHO Kaushal Kishore Yadav said.
Yadav said that Sharafat, an auto driver, suspected his wife of infidelity and planned to eliminate her. “On January 6, he took her on an outing to the city and then strangled her with a stole. He took her body to the tickets on the district’s outskirts, sprinkled fuel from his auto on it and set it afire,” said Yadav.
To confuse the probe, Sharafat threw some part of her remains in both districts, some of which landed in the hands of the police patrol team the next day. Police said that the couple had a two-year-old son while Sharafat was in a relationship with another woman for the last ten years.
