UP woman, ‘fed up of blackmail and sexual abuse’, chokes man to death

The accused is a resident of Ghur Samsapur village under Bhojipura police station limits.

What exactly happened?

The woman told the police that the deceased Iqbal, a zari-zardozi artisan, frequently visited houses in her village to sell clothes, during which she got acquainted with him.

In her statement, the accused said at one point, she and Iqbal exchanged mobile numbers and started talking to each other.

“One day, Iqbal called me to his home on the pretext of selling clothes and tried to get intimate with me. I warned him that I would tell my husband. But Iqbal said that he had my call recordings, adding that he would show them to my husband and destroy my home,” the woman told the police.

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Thereafter, she said she endured Iqbal’s act as she had to protect her little children and her family. “After this, Iqbal blackmailed me into getting physical with him several times. I got tired of his behaviour. So, on January 29, when Iqbal was on his way back home after dropping his wife at her parents’ home, I called him and told him that I wanted to meet,” she further said.

Iqbal gave the accused two sedative pills to mix with her husband’s food to make him sleep. Accordingly, the accused said around 8pm, she served her husband some tea and mixed the pills in his cup. “Soon, he passed out while surfing through his phone,” she said.

Around 11:40 pm that night, the accused spoke to Iqbal, who asked her to come over to his place by saying that he was alone at home.

“I was fed up with Iqbal’s blackmailing, and so, I thought to myself that either I would kill him or I would die,” the woman said in her statement.

‘No other choice left’

When the accused reached Iqbal’s home, the two started talking, and he tried to get intimate with her. But the woman continued talking to Iqbal and when she got the chance, she held his hands apart and sat on his chest.

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“Then, with one hand, I shut his mouth and with the other, I choked him till he died. Once I was sure that he was dead, I dragged his body to the staircase and returned to my home. I was fed up with Iqbal, and I had no other choice other than this to protect myself and my family,” the accused told the police.

Additional superintendent of police (Northern) Mukesh Chandra Mishra said that Iqbal’s body was found on the stairs inside his house on January 30. The next day, his wife, Shahnaz, filed a murder case.

Police said Iqbal’s body has been sent for a postmortem, adding that further investigation into the case was underway.