Delhi Police has arrested Indian Army Major Nikhil Rai Handa from the Army’s cantonment area in Uttar Pradesh’s Meerut on June 24 for his alleged involvement in the murder of a fellow officer’s wife (35-year-old Shailza Dwivedi), who was found with her throat slit near the Delhi Cantonment Metro station on 23 June, police officials said.
“We questioned Handa’s family members and learnt that he was earlier posted in the military engineering wing. His brother said he could have gone to Meerut. We searched 500 Army as well as private guest houses. Handa was caught while he was trying to flee,” said a police officer.
Shailza Dwivedi and Major Handa had first met in Nagaland in 2015 when Major Amit Dwivedi was posted there. Both had kept in touch, even when she came to Delhi after her husband was transferred. Major Handa use to call her more often, police said.
Delhi Police officer in a press conference stated, “Major Dwivedi once caught them during a video call. He even confronted his wife and Handa and warned him to not come close to his wife and his house.”
Shailza’s body has been handed over to her family members after autopsy at the Deen Dayal Upadhyay hospital.
The sequence of events that led to her murder:
1. Major Handa reached Delhi on June 23 and asked Shailza to meet him.
2. CCTV footage revealed that at an Army Base Hospital in the cantonment area Shailza sat into Handa’s car.
3. During the drive, they both had a heated argument, “He then stabbed her with a knife… he pushed her from the car and ran over her body to make it look like an accident,” a police officer said.
4. Her body was found half-an-hour later in the same area.
5. Police found that body was run over and her throat was also slit.
6. Police found bloodstains, a Swiss knife, which has prints all over it.
7. Police said that the major even tried to clean the car with towels, but still, there were blood stains.
