Narela double murder: Man, girlfriend arrested for murdering wife, daughter

New Delhi
Delhi Police on Monday night arrested a 38-year-old man and his girlfriend, who is in her 30s, for allegedly murdering the man’s wife and his 16-year-old daughter at their Narela home on Saturday, after they refused to withdraw a police complaint lodged against the man for molesting his daughter, officers aware of the development said.
Police said the man smashed his wife and daughter’s heads with a pan till they fell. He was arrested from a relative’s house in Mukherjee Nagar on Monday night, police said.
“The women sustained multiple head injuries and died on the spot. We seized the iron pan used by the accused. The neighbours told us that the husband had been harassing the two of them for some time to withdraw the POCSO case,” deputy commissioner of police (outer north) Ravi Kumar Singh said.
Police said the girlfriend of the accused was booked under sections of criminal conspiracy.
On Saturday, the 38-year-old wife, who ran a grocery store and her 16-year-old daughter were found dead at their residence in the Narela industrial area. The minor was a Class 9 student of a Delhi government school. The neighbours alerted the police around 9am upon hearing screams from the house but the accused, a property dealer, managed to escape before the police arrived.
According to police, the couple had been living separately for the past two years — the wife with her daughter in Narela industrial area and the husband with his girlfriend in Narela. After the man moved in with his girlfriend in 2022, there were run-ins between the girlfriend and the wife, police said. In November 2023, the girlfriend lodged a case against the wife and her sister-in-law for assaulting her at her residence. A case was lodged, but no arrest was made.
Police said the molestation case pertained to an incident this January, when the accused allegedly forced his daughter to disrobe and sexually harassed her. A case was lodged and the man was jailed for two months, after which he was released on bail in March.
“The POCSO case is now at trial stage. We found that since his release, he had been pressuring the daughter and wife to withdraw the case. Family members and neighbours told us that he had come to their house before and hit them. He would threaten to kill them,” a senior police officer said.
The fight leading to the murders was also on the same issue, police said.
DCP Singh said, “He told us that they argued for sometime and he thrashed them. As they resisted, he picked up an iron pan and hit his wife on her head. We found she was hit four to five times. He then assaulted his daughter the same way. They both succumbed to the injuries within minutes.”
“We caught him on Monday night. We also arrested his girlfriend for aiding him and being involved in the criminal conspiracy. We found evidence against her hinting that she is involved in the conspiracy of the attack and subsequent murder. Both are in our custody now. The accused keeps saying that he had not planned to kill his daughter,” he said.