Carton containing chopped-body leads Police to engineer who killed wife

Sajid Ali Ansari, a native of Chhapra in Bihar, stayed in Shaheen Bagh with his wife Juhi.

Sajid was frustrated with their frequent fights over finances, and a suspected illicit affair was stressing him.

Last Wednesday night, when an argument broke out, he ended up strangling her dead.

He then called up his brothers Hasmat and Mohammad, who helped him get rid of her body.

The trio chopped Juhi's body in seven pieces, stuffed them in a carton and a bag, wrapped in pieces of cloth and a plastic rice sack. They then dropped it in an abandoned plot in Hazi Colony.

The crime came to light the next morning, when a passerby informed police about a foul smell emanating from the carton.

Identification was impossible as Juhi's face had been mutilated by multiple cuts, police said.

So they used her red and green salwar-kameez as a tool: they scanned at least 100 garment shops to try and find the one where she had bought it from.

"We also traced several rice-traders as her body was wrapped in a rice sack," said DCP Chinmoy Biswal. Nothing worked.

Then police noticed the sticker of a 'movers and packers' company and a code on the carton.

When contacted, the company, informed cops it had been shipped from Sharjah, UAE to one Javed Akhtar in Aligarh, UP.

Police then reached out to Akhtar. He said he had dumped some of those cartons in his leased-out apartment in Shaheen Bagh, which was rented by Sajid.

Immediately, police rushed to the address Akhtar gave, but found that Sajid had already left his house.

The neighbors' description of his wife revealed that it was the same woman who had been murdered.

Police then raided his brother Hasmat's residence in the locality, who led them to Sajid.

All three have now been arrested, thanks to the seemingly-trivial details on the carton.