Missing Faridabad woman's body found buried outside her in-laws' house

A25-year-old adult female, who was reported missing from Faridabad ii months agone, was found murdered and inhumed in a soak-pit dug exterior her marital home in Palla’s Roshan Nagar, police said on Friday. Police said her in-laws allegedly killed her and concealed the crime by claiming she had eloped.The body of Tannu Rajput, who got married to Arun Singh, 28, in 2023, was recovered from a pit around 8 to 10 feet deep after police dug up the road in front of the family’s three-storey home.Police said her decomposed remains were identified by her parental family through her clothing. An autopsy was conducted at Badshah Khan Civil Hospital by a medical board on Friday and the report was expected to arrive by next week.Originally from Khera village in Uttar Pradesh’s Firozabad district, Rajput was reported missing on April 25, when her husband filed a complaint at Palla police station, claiming that she was intellectually challenged and had vanished the day before. Investigators later found the claim was an elaborate cover-up for murder.Suspicions first arose when Rajput’s family in UP, when contacted by investigators for leads in her missing case, expressed doubts and disbelief over her husband’s claims that she had eloped with someone. They instead accused her husband and in-laws of foul play. Despite multiple attempts to trace her, police could find no leads for weeks.On Friday morning, police returned to the family’s residence and took Arun Singh’s father, Bhoop Singh, 50, in for questioning. During sustained interrogation, Bhoop allegedly admitted to murdering Rajput and burying her body in the soak-pit at night to avoid detection.Police brought in a JCB machine to excavate the spot, and after digging nearly 8 to 10 feet, they recovered Rajput’s decomposed body. “Her remains were identified by her family based on the clothes found at the site,” said Inspector Satya Parkash, SHO of Palla police station.Inspector Parkash said, “The pit was originally dug in April for a sewer connection, as the area lacks formal water or drainage infrastructure. The family filled it with sand, and after committing the murder, buried her body there under the cover of darkness. None of the neighbours had any idea about what had happened.”He added that the family later misled neighbours by telling them that Rajput had likely eloped, and they were searching for her.Parkash said Rajput’s parents reached Faridabad earlier this week to follow up on the investigation.“They kept insisting the truth would come out if the husband or father-in-law was properly interrogated. When we visited the house, only the father-in-law was present. We brought him in for questioning, and his confession cracked the case,” he said.Preliminary investigations suggest the motive could be either dowry or an alleged extramarital affair.“Her family has alleged that she was killed over dowry. They denied that she was intellectually challenged. The investigation is ongoing, and we will soon confirm the exact motive and the timeline of the murder,” Parkash said.The missing person’s case has been transformed into a murder case by invoking sections 103(1) (murder), 3(5) (common intention) and 61 (criminal conspiracy) of Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita against Rajput’s husband and other members of the Singh family, police said. Several of them, including Arun Singh, who works at a private firm, are on the run. Bhoop Singh runs a tailoring shop from the ground floor of their residence.