Major made 3,000 calls to victim

Prateek Chauhan & PK Jaiswar

Tribune News Service

New Delhi/Amritsar, June 25

Major Nikhil Rai Handa, arrested for killing fellow officer Major Amit Dwivedi’s wife Shelja, had gifted her a phone and made 3,000 calls this year, show call records. In judicial custody for four days, Major Handa will be taken to Meerut to reconstruct the crime. The police have arrested his uncle and a cousin for “helping” him.

In Amritsar, where Shelja was cremated on Monday, her brother Sukaran Kalia, a lawyer, said his sister “did not have an affair with Major Handa. He had been stalking her. Such claims by the police have hurt the family”.

The Delhi Police have recovered the clothes Major Handa was wearing when he allegedly killed Shelja as well as two Swiss knives. While fleeing to Meerut, Major Handa reportedly got his car washed to remove the victim’s bloodstains and also threw away her cellphone. But a forensic team took seven blood samples from the car which matched with Shelja’s blood group. The hair samples found in the car matched too. The dumped cellphone has been recovered.

Shelja’s husband was to leave for Uganda on a UN peace mission in two months and had decided to move her and their six-year-old son to Amritsar, Shelja’s native town.

“Just 10 days ago, we were celebrating her return to the city as her husband moved their belongings to the cantonment area. Now, we are mourning her death,” said Sukaran Kalia, her brother. He and his mother were in Shimla when they were informed of her brutal end.

“I got a call from my brother-in-law. He said Shelja had gone missing. The police told him they had found a woman’s body. He identified my sister’s body from a tattoo,” he said. 

Shelja’s father Subhash Kalia was a local Congress man. He died two years ago.