Jabalpur man held for killing Nagpur-based woman BJP functionary says victim was his wife and he dumped her body in river: Police

A resident of Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh, who has been arrested on the charge of killing a Nagpur-based woman BJP member, has told the police that the victim was his wife and he murdered her over monetary and personal issues, an official here said on Saturday.

The accused, identified as Amit Sahu alias Pappu (37), also told the investigators that he killed the victim, Sana Khan, by hitting her with a stick in his house and later dumped her body in a river in the district, he said.

Amit Sahu was arrested from Jabalpur’s Gorabazar area on Friday on the charge of killing Sana Khan, a resident of Nagpur. During the interrogation, he told the police that she was his wife and he killed her over monetary and personal issues, Additional Superintendent of Police Kamal Maurya said.

”The accused said he killed his wife (Khan) by hitting her with a stick in his house and later threw her body into the Hiran river from a bridge near Meregaon village under Belkheda police station limits,” he said.

A search operation is currently on to find the victim’s body in the river and its nearby areas, Maurya said.

The accused also revealed the name of his accomplice who was present with him during the offence and a search for that man is going on, he said.

The accused runs a ‘dhaba’ (roadside eatery), he said.

”The police in Maharashtra’s Nagpur had registered a case on August 1 and its team visited Jabalpur on August 4 in search of the woman after the probe revealed that as per her last location, she was at a house in Jabapur,” the official said.

The Jabalpur and Nagpur police jointly carried a search at the house and further action was taken accordingly, he said. The Nagpur police earlier said 34-year-old Khan was the Bharatiya Janata Party’s minority cell functionary in the eastern Maharashtra city. On Friday, the Nagpur police said that accused Sahu confessed to have killed Khan, who went missing last week, and also showed the murder spot to the investigators.

A Nagpur police official said that Sahu and two others were arrested in Jabalpur on Friday, following which they were brought to Nagpur, where they will be produced in a court on Saturday. Khan’s mother Mehrunisha, a resident of Awasthi Nagar in Nagpur, lodged a complaint when her daughter went missing after leaving for Jabalpur on August 1 to meet Sahu, the police said.

Based on her complaint, a first information report (FIR) was lodged at the Mankapur police station against Sahu, who was booked under Indian Penal Code (IPC) sections 364 (kidnapping or abducting in order to murder) and 506 (criminal intimidation), they said.

According to the FIR, Khan left from Nagpur in a private bus and contacted her mother the next day on reaching Jabalpur. Later she went missing.