In a ghastly incident, an Indian Air Force (IAF) corporal was killed and his body hacked to pieces by a colleague over his alleged affair with the latter’s wife.
The victim, Vipin Shukla (27), a corporal in the Air Force Wives Welfare Association Canteen, belonged to Gonda, Uttar Pradesh.
An Air Force Sergeant and his wife were arrested by the police from the Bhisiana air force station. The duo, along with another family member, allegedly murdered the corporal, chopped his body into pieces and stuffed it in polythene bags.
Shukla had been missing before his body was recovered in pieces. The accused, Sulesh Kumar, and his wife Anuradha have been arrested and booked under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), which relates to murder. However, Sulesh’s brother-in-law Shashi Bhushan, who worked in the Merchant Navy, is absconding, said the report.
Shukla joined the airforce in 2009 and was posted at the Bhisiana airforce station in May 2014. He went missing on February 8.
During his interrogation, Kumar confessed to the crime, saying he had decided to kill Shukla as he had an “illicit relation” with his wife. “After discovering she was pregnant, Anuradha [had] asked Vipin [Shukla] to marry her, but he refused. He had also been spreading details of their relationship among other employees. Thus, Anuradha, with her husband and brother hatched a conspiracy to murder Vipin [Shukla] for revenge,” Superintendent of police (traffic) Gurmeet Singh said.
The murder took place on February 8, the day Shukla went missing. Kumar had called Shukla to help him pack as they were moving to a different quarter. “He attacked him [Shukla] with an axe, killing him. He then packed Shukla’s body into a box and took it to his new quarters,” said the police. The body was cut into pieces on February 19 and packed into 16 polythene bags. While some of the bags were kept in the wardrobe, the others were found in the refrigerator.
Singh said that Shukla’s wife Kumkum had registered a missing person complaint on February 15. During the search operation, a team from the Punjab police and air force station officials detected a foul smell from Kumar’s quarters and later found Shukla’s body stored in 16 polythene bags.
