Manslayers

Insecure Missus

The murder of Rohit Shekhar Tiwari

Well connected, intelligent and ambitious, Apoorva Shukla was all excited when she first met Rohit Shekhar Tiwari, the son of former CM of Uttar Pradesh N.D. Tiwari, in Lucknow in 2017. Both got introduced through a matrimonial website and the couple instantly hit it off. Soon, the much-in-love couple began meeting regularly and started living together. Exactly a year later, on 12 May 2018, they got married and moved into Rohit’s posh Defence Colony home in New Delhi. But the marital bliss did not last long.

In the early hours of April 16, 2019, Apoorva, a Supreme Court lawyer, smothered her drunken husband to death using a pillow. For the next one week, as investigators were probing multiple angles, Apoorva appeared calm and normal. But when the needle of suspicion pointed towards her and she was confronted, she spilled the beans. Even then, the investigating team say, she showed no signs of remorse.

Looking at the old photographs where a smiling Apoorva is seated next to Rohit, one might have never imagined such an end to the marriage. Hers is the story of a woman who went to the extreme of killing her own husband! “From the beginning, we suspected her as there were only three persons who had access to the room of Rohit Shekhar (the two helps and Apoorva). Normally, if the husband of any woman dies, the wife is in grief but Apoorva was very composed,” recalls Rajiv Ranjan, Additional Commissioner of Police (ACP), Crimes, New Delhi, under whose supervision the murder mystery was cracked.

According to ACP Rajiv’s investigations, “Apoorva was an ambitions woman who  had political aspirations — she was banking on her father-in-law N.D. Tiwari’s connections. Relations between the couple began to nose-dive when she learnt about Rohit’s proximity to a woman relative. Their relationship worsened with each passing day, to an extent that there were talks of divorce between them,” he adds.

Months later, fights between the couple became frequent, and Rohit, who was already addicted to sleeping pills, would often come home drunk. Several days before the murder, an angry Apoorva took off to her parents’ home in Indore after an ugly spat with Rohit. She stayed there for three weeks but returned to their home in Delhi. The relationship strained further when the said relative accompanied Rohit and his mother to Uttarakhand to cast votes while Apoorva stayed back in Delhi. Apoorva made a video call to his phone, during which she saw the woman relative drinking with Rohit, while he was trying to hide her.

On 15 April, Rohit returned to Delhi. On the night of the incident, Apoorva woke up Rohit who was drunk and enquired about his relationship with the woman. A scuffle ensued, after which she stifled him to death with a pillow. For sometime after his death, Apoorva sat on the same bed, next to his body before retiring to her room.

As per the senior IPS officer, all the aspirations that Apoorva, an MBA graduate, had with the marriage, had crashed. “She was the national president of the youth wing of INTUC in Indore, and she had political ambitions, aspiring for a ticket to contest the elections. She thought that she would benefit from the legacy of a senior Congress leader and former Uttarakhand CM N.D. Tiwari,” says Rajiv Ranjan. That she showed no remorse and showed nothing to suggest that she was repentant for what she did added to the grimness of the tale. In fact, according to ACP Rajiv, she had appeared normal from the day the murder came to light.

Why would a woman, an MBA graduate and Supreme Court lawyer, go to such extremes, knowing fully well the consequences of her actions?

“All her aspirations and goals came crashing down. She grew disillusioned after she learnt that as per the will, the property she hoped to get a share of was to be divided in a ratio of 60:40 between Rohit and his half-brother Siddharth. In case of either of their deaths, the surviving son was to receive the rest, which meant that Apoorva was edged out even in terms of money and property. It’s unfortunate that educated and intelligent people resort to such acts. Whatever their reason to commit a crime, the law catches up with wrongdoers sooner or later,” ACP Rajiv, adds.

An evil mum

The Sheena Bora Murder Case

Much before the Rohit Shekhar-Apoorva Shukla Tiwari saga, the country was glued to TV sets as minute details emerged from the sensational murder of Sheena Bora in April 2012, in which her mother Indrani Mukerjea, a former HR consultant and media executive, turned out to be the main accused. The wife of Peter Mukerjea, a retired Indian television executive, Indrani co-founded INX media with her husband, where she took on the role of CEO. In 2009, she resigned from the company and later sold her stake in it.

Sheena Das Bora and her brother Mikhail were born to Pori Bora, later known as Indrani Mukerjea and Siddhartha Das in Shillong in 1987. Indrani left the children under the care of her parents in Guwahati and moved to Kolkata, where she studied computers and stayed as a paying guest. Sheena and her brother were subsequently raised in Guwahati.

While in Kolkata, Indrani married Sanjeev Khanna and the couple had a daughter. They divorced in 2002 and Indrani then married Peter Mukerjea. When Sheena learnt about her mother and moved to Mumbai in 2006, Indrani introduced her as her younger sister.

Sheena Bora, an executive working for Mumbai Metro One, in Mumbai, went missing on April 24, 2012. She is said to have taken a leave of absence and sent in her written resignation. On the same day, Rahul Mukerjea (Peter Mukerjea’s son, whom Sheena was dating) received a break-up SMS from Sheena’s phone. Indrani claimed that Sheena had gone to the United States for higher studies. Sheena was never seen after that day.

Cold blooded murder

Indrani planned the murder meticulously. The evening before the murder, she even surveyed a likely area to dump the body and even discussed the murder with her ex-husband Sanjeev Khanna. On April 24, Khanna flew down to Mumbai and checked into a hotel at Worli. By then, Indrani had already rented a car to facilitate the abduction of Sheena and for disposal of her body. Indrani had asked Sheena to meet her on the evening of April 24 and though reluctant, Sheena agreed.

Around 6 pm that day, Khanna joined Indrani and an hour later, when Sheena was dropped off by Rahul Mukherjea near National College in Bandra, Indrani and Khanna picked her up. Minutes later, they drove her to one of the bylanes in Bandra where Khanna is said to have strangled her to death.

After the murder, Sheena’s body was taken to Indrani’s Worli house where it was put in a bag and stuffed in the trunk of the car.

While Khanna left for his hotel, Indrani stayed home while the car driver Rai slept inside the car with the body in the trunk! The next morning, the three accused drove to the Gagode village. Fearing police checks, they propped Sheena’s body up between Indrani and Khanna on the rear seat, to maker her look asleep, rather than putting her in the boot.

Later, they dragged the body out of the car to an isolated place in the forests, stuffed the body back into the bag, poured petrol over it and set it on fire. It was only after the body was completely burnt that the accused returned to Mumbai.

On Rahul’s insistence, the police visited Indrani’s residence, where they were informed by the staff that she was out of India. Upon her return, Indrani visited the Worli police station and informed the police that Rahul was trying to stalk Sheena and that was why she had moved to the United States without informing him.

Then, on 23 May 2012, local police in Pen Tehsil in Raigad District of Maharashtra found a body after villagers complained of a foul odour. No identification was made and the remains were sent to JJ Hospital. Back then, nothing linked the body to the Sheena Bora case.

Four months before her arrest, the Mumbai police commenced surveillance of Indrani following a tip-off. On 21 August 2015, Shyamvar Pinturam Rai, Indrani’s driver, was arrested for possession of illegal weapons. During interrogation, he allegedly revealed details of Sheena Bora’s murder. On August 26, Sheena’s brother Mikhail revealed that she was Indrani’s daughter rather than sister. Following more disclosures by Rai, the police finally arrested Indrani on August 25. Her husband Peter too was arrested later. Both are still in jail.

One is yet to decipher the motive for Indrani to have murdered her own daughter.

Remorseless endings
An IPS officer, who was part of the team that probed the case, wishing anonymity, tells us that he had never come across any such case in his entire career. “We knew that something was not right in the family ever since we mounted surveillance on the family members, especially Indrani. We then got down to probing Indrani’s past and learnt many aspects about her previous husbands and how their relationship soured and how she had moved on. We investigated multiple angles and finally achieved a breakthrough.”

During interrogation, the officer recollects Indrani had appeared lost. “However, I would not say that she showed any signs of remorse. Perhaps she realised that there was no escape. If I recollect correctly, her facial expressions indicated that she was more worried about being in trouble rather than feeling bad that she had conspired and killed her daughter,” he recalls.

Whodunit?
Actor Kunal Singh’s Murder

Another such high profile murder was that of actor Kunal Singh, who was found dead in his Versova flat on 6 February 2008. Because the actor was found hanging from the ceiling, the police concluded that it was a suicide and closed the case. However, in August 2008, Kunal Singh’s father Col Rajendra Singh approached the Bombay High Court and filed a petition stating that his son did not commit suicide. In response to this, the court ordered the police to re-investigate the case.

Col Rajendra was confident that the death was not a suicide due to the injury marks he found on his son’s chest and arm, leading him and the doctor who conducted the post-mortem to believe that the actor was first strangulated and then hung from the ceiling fan to make it look like a suicide. Kunal’s co-star Lavina, who claimed to have been in the washroom of the rented flat at the time of his death, was later arrested by the police for his murder.

Girlfriend, partner in Crime

Neeraj  rover case

It was a gruesome murder that perhaps didn’t get the deserved punishment. Mumbai-based television executive Neeraj Grover and Maria Susairaj were very close friends, so it seemed natural that when Neeraj went missing, she filed a police complaint. However, what followed next was horrifying.

On May 6, 2008, Grover stayed over with Maria at her flat. Emile Jerome, a naval officer and Maria’s boyfriend at the time, came to know about this. Suspecting that the two were having an affair, he flew down to Mumbai where he caught the two of them in her flat. Raging with anger, Jerome murdered Grover, went to a nearby mall to buy a knife, chopped up his body into pieces, put it in a bag, and with Maria’s help, burnt the bags in a forest.

Maria Susairaj was found guilty of destroying evidence and sentenced to three years’ imprisonment, while Jerome was found guilty of culpable homicide not amounting to murder and of destroying evidence. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison for the killing. The two were also ordered to pay a fine of Rs 50,000 to Neeraj Grover’s family.

Hushed up affair

The Madhumita Shukla Murder Case

Another case where the pati, patni aur woh factor ended up in murder was that of Madhumita Shukla, a 24-year-old budding poet and the alleged lover of Amarmani Tripathi, the then Samajwadi Party strongman. On 9 May 2003, Madhumita was gunned down at close range by two visitors in her two-room apartment in Lucknow’s Paper Mill Colony. She was seven months pregnant when she was found dead.

The investigation of the case was taken up by Ajay Kumar Chaturvedi, SHO of PS Mahanagar, Lucknow. Ajay collected all the relevant information such as the diary of the deceased, provided shelter to a servant who was the lone witness in the case and took the investigation into the house of Amarmani Tripathi. But the pressure from the Samajwadi Party leader was so much that the policemen were on the verge of falsely implicating two students who were known to the victim.

Even as the investigation appeared to be headed into oblivion, the then UP CM Mayawati handed over the case to the CBI. As it turned out, the murder was planned by Madhumani Tiwari, Tripathi’s wife, endorsed by Tripathi and executed by hired assassins.

The plot
On the fateful day, a domestic help, Deshraj, is said to have handed over to Shukla a handwritten slip from the two visitors, who were waiting at her door step. Shukla came to the door herself and let the visitors in. While Deshraj went to the kitchen to prepare tea, the conversation between the guests and Shukla suddenly fell silent and gunshots were fired. As Deshraj rushed out of the kitchen and into the room, he saw Shukla lying dead in a pool of blood. The “guests” vanished in no time.

The sensational case is still fresh in the mind of the then Joint Director of the CBI (Special Crimes), Vivek Dube, who was heading the investigation. “Madhumita came from a very poor background and her father died when she was young. Struggling financially, Madhumita used to recite poetry at various poetry gatherings. Amarmani Tripathi was the chief guest at one such event where he instantly fell for Madhumita. We learnt that he later got in touch with her. Madhumani, Tripathi’s wife, apparently knew that he was intimate with Madhumita,” recalls Vivek.

But soon, Madhumita began making a lot of demands such as a home for herself and a petrol pump dealership for her brother. Tripathi first purchased a small house for her in Lucknow.

Investigations revealed that on Tripathi’s insistence, Madhumita underwent two abortions, with Madhumani endorsing it. But the story turned bleak when the budding poetess, who was pregnant for the third time, insisted on wanting to give birth to the child. “This angered Madhumani as she did not want another claimant in the family property. It was then she decided that it was time to do away with Madhumita, before she could deliver her child,” recalls Vivek.

How the cookie crumbled

As with most cases involving political bigwigs, this one too became a high profile investigation. Under tremendous pressure from Tripathi, the local police, who was initially investigating the case, were close to implicating two innocent IIT Kanpur students, who had nothing to do with the murder. “The two students were classmates of Madhumita who had come in contact with her to take part in a poetry convention they were organising. Since they were in touch with her, the police decided to falsely implicate them. Had Mayawati not transferred the probe to CBI, perhaps the lives of those two innocent students would have been shattered,” reveals Dube.

One of the servants in Madhumita’s house had seen the two assailants who had shot her dead. And the investigation team could trace the phone calls relating to the murder to Tripathi’s wife Madhumani in Gorakhpur. It was clear that the murder conspiracy was hatched by Madhumani, executed by the two assailants while Tripathi was in the know. And all were arrested and convicted. “Madhumani wanted Madhumita eliminated as she did not want another claimant for the property, which she revealed during interrogation,” says Dube, as he recalls how despite Tripathi trying to pressure the CBI to let go of the investigations. The team was persistant in bringing justice.

Lack of evidence

The Syed Modi Murder Case

On the evening of July 28, 1988, Syed Modi, a rising badminton star, was coming out of the KD Singh Babu stadium in Lucknow after a routine practice session. As he stepped out of the stadium, a group of assailants opened fire at him from point blank range. Modi died instantly. At least six men were seen fleeing in a red car.

This was another case that sent shock waves across the country and grabbed national headlines. Syed Modi’s wife Ameeta was initially the prime suspect and was among the seven people named as accused in the charge-sheet. Sanjay Singh, who later married Ameeta, was also named by the investigators. The police subsequently filed murder charges against the two under the suspicion that they had got Modi killed due to their extramarital affair. However, the case against Ameeta and Sanjay Singh for conspiracy was dropped — for lack of concrete evidence — and the two later married.

Hailing from Maharashtra, Ameeta had grown up in cosmopolitan Mumbai and came from an affluent, upper-class English-medium educated family, all of which was very different from Modi’s background. Both families were stridently opposed to the two marrying, not only because of the vast chasm in their backgrounds, but also because they anticipated that professional issues, jealousies and one-upmanship would become major hurdles in a marriage between two ambitious, target-oriented and over-achieving individuals.

The CBI arrested Ameeta and her lover within days of the murder, but according to retired investigating officers, the investigations were scuttled by the then government. The evidence included letters written by Ameeta’s mother regarding the paternity of Aakanksha (their daughter), letters written during the engagement of Syed Modi and Ameeta in 1984 and a letter where Syed Modi had threatened to commit suicide.

The honey trap

Among the terrifying woman killers in the country is starlet Simran Sood, a model and struggling actor who ended up being the co-accused in the kidnapping and killing of 28-year-old Delhi resident Karan Kumar Kakkad and 62-year-old businessman Arun Tikku in 2012. Incidentally, she was the main accused Vijay Palande’s honey trap to lure wealthy men for over a decade.

After his arrest in Karan Kumar Kakkad’s murder, Palande revealed that just before killing Kakkad, he and his accomplices told him that that they were about to slit his throat and chop his body into pieces. “'Would you like to take sleeping pills before being killed or will you like to remain conscious ?” was what Palande is believed to have asked Kakkad, who then chose to take the sleeping pills. Initially, he was given four pills but since it was not working on him, they stuffed 10 more pills into his mouth. Finally when he turned unconscious, they dragged him to the bathroom, slit his throat and kept the body under shower till the blood washed away. Subsequently, they chopped the body into pieces and disposed it off at an isolated place in Kumbharli ghat.

Similarly, in the murder of Arun Tikku, the senior citizen was stabbed to death by two of Palande’s associates. Police said Palande wanted to take possession of the flats owned by Anuj Tikku, son of Arun Tikku and therefore hatched a conspiracy to kill the elderly man. Much before the murder, Palande had befriended Anuj and both used to hang out regularly. On April 7, 2012, Arun was alone at home when two people walked into his house and as he opened the door stabbed him to death. Thereafter, they chopped his body into pieces and dumped it on the city outskirts. The elderly man had come to Mumbai to convince his son to return to Delhi with him. Initially, the police suspected the role of Arun’s son but later, after investigation, ruled it out.

Tricked by a beautiful face

A regular at Page 3 and IPL parties, Simran, who investigators believe was Palande’s niece, had run away from home to make a career in Bollywood. Further investigations revealed that Simran had been with Palande ever since he murdered Air India engineer Anup Das and his father Swaraj Ranjan Das in 1998. While Palande was convicted for the murders, Simran was first booked for unlawful occupation of Das’ flat.

Ambitious Simran Sood was willing to go to any extreme for a lavish lifestyle. Having undergone several cosmetic surgeries to look attractive, Simran was the perfect bait for Vijay Palande, who is believed to have encouraged her to mingle with the super-rich in the social circuit. They would befriend people who they could then lure into their trap.

“For many of her victims, it was difficult to make out that it was the same face that had lured them. She underwent cosmetic surgeries in Dubai and Mumbai to enhance her appearance and post surgery, her face would be very different from the past, which she used to her advantage to target the next victim,” reveal investigators. Even Palande is known to have facial surgery to evade the police.

In 2002, Palande had jumped parole and gone missing but was still in touch with Simran, who had become a regular in the Page 3 circuit and was hobnobbing with some of famous names of the city. “Simran had herself photographed with film stars, top businessmen and even cricketers and posted them on social networking sites. For them, Simran was arm candy. She would get close to them and later introduce them to Palande as her brother, following which he would win the confidence of their victim and then go in for the kill,” say investigators.

Psychology of a Killer

Evidence suggests that the most common reasons for a murder are gain, jealousy, domestic violence and love. We get experts to shed light on this behaviour

Although men commit most types of crimes, it’s been estimated that women commit 10 per cent of all homicides. Research on male homicidal behaviour is extensive, but comparatively fewer studies focus on female criminality and particularly about women committing homicide.
These are observations of Dr Mahmood Nasiri, a London-based psychiatrist who also writes lawyer-referred medico-legal reports for psychiatric assessment of clients. As per the psychiatrist practising at the National Health Service (NHS), UK, while homicide constitutes the most extreme form of violence on the spectrum of human aggressive behaviour, physical and violent aggression are traits usually attributed to the masculine gender.

Gain-conditioned mind-sets

In cases where gain is the main motive for murder, it could be for a tangible benefit or to prevent loss of wealth, honour or respect in society. Dr K. Prashant, a consultant psycho-pathologist at Yashoda Hospitals, Hyderabad, claims two reasons for most murders to be committed by men. “Women have historically been conditioned to face far greater or excessive social consequences for smaller infractions. Second, in an evolutionary context, while men have always used physical strength as an approved way of dominance and upward movement, women took on care-giving roles, which required emotional strength and depth,” says Prashant, who was a clinician and consulting forensic psycho-pathologist to the United States’ police for 22 years before moving to India.
Dr Nasiri believes women committing homicide usually do it for financial gains-for either the insurance money and properties or they fear they’ll be excluded from the will. Several high-profile murders have been committed to save the offenders’ financial, political and societal positions,” he explains.

A sore to kill

Mariticide is the killing of one’s husband or romantic partner (although in the common law terminology, it might be used as a gender-neutral term for the spouse of either sex). “Homicides because of jealousy involve an offender fearing they’d lose their partner to another, and are more common in males. A history of domestic violence, perpetrated by males on female offenders, has also been implicated as a significant primary or co-morbid factor in intimate partner homicides. Then there are homicides motivated by love, committed so the offender can ‘rescue’ a person they love from a situation they perceive to be ‘worse than death’ (altruistic or assisted homicide when the victim suffers from a terminal illness) or the family is facing sudden abject poverty,” adds Dr Nasri.
Dr Prashant goes on to explain that fear of loss is another reason women commit such offences. In rarer cases, it is for property or opportunities. “Both men and women are motivated by desire for reward, but women’s brains endow them with a greater threshold for bearing anger or emotional pain.