Man held four years after murdering physically challenged wife

Kottayam: A 43-year-old man, who allegedly murdered his physically challenged wife by throwing her into a ravine and married twice after that, has landed in police custody four years after committing the crime. Police at Changanassery near here arrested Pradeep Kumar yesterday claiming that evidence had been gathered to charge him with murdering his wife Anjali, who became disabled following a motorcycle accident. According to police, Kumar allegedly administered sleeping pills to his wife and took her in a car to the hill resort Wagamon and pushed her into a ravine in October 2009. The day after the murder, he lodged a complaint saying his wife was missing. As police could not come across any evidence to disbelieve Kumar, they virtually closed the case six months after the crime. The case, however, was reopened after police received

an anonymous letter raising question as to how a person who had become physically challenged could go missing on her own.

Following this, police questioned Kumar and gathered details of the crime he allegedly committed. A police team had begun search to gather forensic evidence at the ravine where the woman was dumped by her h usband, police said.Anjali had suffered serious head injury in a motorcycle accident while riding on a two-wheeler with her husband and two-year-old daughter in February 2009, following w hich she became bedridden, police said. After the murder, Kumar had married twice, proof of
which had been gathered from the local sub-registrar's office. The second wife deserted him allegedly after being harassed
and tortured by Kumar, police said. PTI