Following the recovery of the remains of 71-year-old Rupinder Kaur Pandher, a US-based woman from Ludhiana, on Wednesday, the police said later that Sukhjeet Singh, a typist at the Ludhiana district court, had confessed to killing her at the behest of her fiance, UK-based Charanjit Singh Grewal.
Sukhjeet claimed that her fiance, who met her online a year ago, allegedly wanted to get rid of her because he was unwilling to marry her, despite promising to do so.
“Sukhjeet brutally bludgeoned her using baseball bats, killing her in cold blood in his house in Kila Raipur village on July 12. Then he burnt her body on charcoal in a storeroom, stuffed the charred remains in four gunny bags, and dumped the same in the drain at Ghungrana,” Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) for Ludhiana city Rupinder Singh said.
Her skeletal remains and iPhone were found near a drain in the Ghungrana village.
Charanjit is said to have lured Rupinder to India using her pending property dispute case, which he entrusted to Sukhjeet. Charanjit reportedly met Sukhjeet in 2014 while doing campaign work for the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), the police said.
From India, Rupinder transferred her power of attorney to Sukhjeet, and even lived with him in Kila Raipur as the property case continued.
She had also made large payments—about Rs 30 lakhs to Rs 35 lakhs—to both the men, under the pretext that it was for marriage expenses.
When she learnt of Charanjit's hesitation, she allegedly threatened to implicate him in a rape case.
It was then that Charanjit urged Sukhjeet to kill Rupinder, promising to pay him Rs 50 lakhs for it, and to take him abroad.
Inspector Sukhjinder Singh of the Dehlon police station—where Sukhjeet is in custody—said that days after Rupinder was murdered, her US-based sister Kamaljit Khaizah contacted Sukhjeet about her sister.
To avoid suspicion, Sukhjeet filed a missing persons complaint in August, falsely claiming that Rupinder had left for the Delhi airport to attend a wedding in Canada, and was missing since then.
Charanjit is currently in the UK, and it is unclear when he will be brought to India for trial.
