The Delhi man, Ashok, suspected of killing his 40-year-old wife while traveling to Prayagraj for the Mahakumbh 2025, drew inspiration from crime thriller serials.
Inspector Upendra Singh and station house officer Jhunsi Kotwali reported that 48-year-old Ashok Kumar had admitted to the crime. He is currently incarcerated in Naini jail.
According to his relatives, authorities claimed that an extramarital affair motivated the murder.
A man had been plotting his wife’s murder for months, carefully planning every detail. According to the SHO, during questioning, he admitted that crime thrillers inspired him and said he had carried a knife from Delhi to commit the crime. He later confessed that after consuming liquor, he got into an argument with his wife, which ultimately led him to kill her.
The sequence of events
Ashok and his wife Meenakshi traveled to Prayagraj, supposedly for a holy dip at the Sangam. However, instead of checking into a hotel—where they would have had to provide identification details—Ashok chose a different approach.
After reaching Jhunsi station from Trilokpuri, Delhi, on February 18, the couple bathed in the Ganga. As night fell, they wandered around Azad Nagar in search of shelter, telling locals they were too poor to afford a hotel and requesting a place to stay for the night.
Gayatri Devi, a 72-year-old woman living alone in her double-story house while her son, Sanjay Bind, was away for work, noticed the struggling couple and took pity on them. Moved by their situation, she allowed them to stay in a room on the first floor.
The next morning, when there was no response from the room, Gayatri Devi grew concerned and went upstairs to check.
To her shock, she found the main door open and discovered Meenakshi’s lifeless body in the washroom with her throat slit, as per police reports.
Ashok himself lodged a missing complaint
To avoid suspicion, Ashok went to the police station himself and filed a missing person’s report, claiming his wife had vanished. He told his sons, Ashwani and Adarsh, that their mother had gone missing during the Kumbh Mela.
He informed his relatives in Delhi that Meenakshi had gotten separated from him. However, doubts soon arose.On February 21, the Jhunsi police received a call from Meenakshi’s brother, Pravesh Kumar, and her sons, Ashwani and Adarsh, who suspected Ashok’s involvement in her disappearance.
They informed the police that the reason for the couple’s conflict was Ashok’s extramarital affair.
After using Ashok’s cell phone number to track him down, the police detained him late on February 21 in the city’s Baihrana neighborhood.
Authorities took him into custody after he confessed to his crime during questioning.
Ed Sheeran’s Performance Halted by Police – Here’s Why