A 32-year-old man reportedly shot dead a 26-year-old woman he was in a relationship with and then killed himself inside a car in Sector 107 of Noida on Saturday morning, police said, adding that they recovered the pistol from the man’s right hand.
Police said the two of them reportedly knew each other for 15 years, and that the man had decided to end his life after she decided to marry another person due to familial pressure.
After being informed by a sanitation worker about the bodies, police found that the car was locked from the inside. “When we reached, the car was locked and both were lying dead on the front seats. After breaking the rear window of the car, we retrieved their bodies and sent them for post-mortem examination,” a police officer, who is part of the investigation, said on the condition of anonymity.
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The officer said, “A pistol was found in the man’s right hand while both had sustained gunshot wounds from right to left. No signs of struggle were found inside the vehicle.”
Police said the deceased ran a water plant business and stayed with his family in Delhi’s Trilokpuri, while the woman was a resident of Noida’s Sector 101 and worked with a private company.
Manisha Singh, additional deputy commissioner of police, Noida, said, “Prima facie, it appears that the man shot the woman and then died by suicide. Whether it is a suicide pact or murder-suicide will be confirmed in the autopsy report, which would reveal at what distance the shots were fired.”
Police said there was no CCTV camera in the vicinity of the car’s final location. A team is scanning CCTV footage to check when they arrived at the spot. The incident took place barely two kilometres away from the woman’s house. They said that the gun used in the crime was an illegal weapon and they are probing how he had gained access to it.
‘Missing since evening’
The elder brother of the deceased man said that the two of them had been out of reach since late Friday.
“My brother used to pick up and drop the woman from office to home for the past several years. On Friday, around 5pm, he left home to pick her up. Minutes later, my wife received a WhatsApp message from an ISD number, which triggered panic in our home,” he told HT.
The message, accessed by HT, read: “I am going to end my life and the woman is responsible for my death. In the 15 years of our relation, she promised me marriage but now she is going to marry someone else. Due to this, I am going to end my life as she cheated on me.”
Police said they are verifying the message. The man had then switched off his mobile and remained unreachable, and the woman had also switched off her mobile phone later, the family said.
The man and the woman’s families approached the Mayur Vihar Phase 1 police station to file a missing person complaint. “We were threatened by the woman’s family for her disappearance. When we asked them to approach the police, they then filed a complaint at Sector 58 police station in Noida,” the brother said.
But neither family was aware of either of them being stressed.
“Around 7pm on Friday, my daughter called my wife to inform her that she was returning home. But when she did not reach after two to three hours, we approached the police,” the woman’s father told HT.
“About a year ago, the man approached us with a marriage proposal but we refused. After that, they both maintained distance. We were unaware that they were in contact,” he said
He also said that the family was not planning to get the woman married immediately, as they were occupied with some other issue. The man’s brother said that the woman’s family used to live in Ashok Vihar, Delhi, earlier and they refused the couple’s union due to caste differences. “He bought the car, in which they were found dead, around four months ago and also bought a flat in Noida to live with her after marriage.”
No case has been registered, and further investigation is underway.