Ranchi police on Thursday arrested the main accused in the murder of a woman whose body with head severed was recovered from a forest at Ormanjhi on the outskirts of the Jharkhand capital on January 3.
A police team arrested history-sheeter Sheikh Bilal early on Thursday morning from a friend’s house at Pancha village under Ormanjhi police station where he was hiding.
Ranchi rural superintendent of police Naushad Alam Ansari confirmed the arrest.
“We have arrested Sheikh Bilal, who has been to jail for cases of murder, under the Arms Act and other such cases in the past. We are questioning him at the moment. We are also trying to apprehend other accomplices involved in the crime as it is not possible for a single man to commit the crime in the manner in which it was done,” said Ansari, who led the police team which arrested Bilal.
A source said that the accused was keeping a tab on the activities of the police through newspaper and TV.
“We found several vernacular newspapers at the house where he was hiding since the day of the crime. There was also a TV in his room. He had cleverly switched off his mobile soon after committing the crime to ensure he could not be traced. However, we got a tip-off and searched the house early in the morning,” the source added.
On January 12, the police finally managed to recover the woman’s head from the field of Bilal.
“The head was kept in a mound of salt so that it does not emit foul smell and get decomposed soon. It was identified by the parents of the woman as that of Shufia Perveen, first wife of the prime suspect Sheikh Bilal. There had been frequent quarrels between the two of late,” added Ansari.
Protests had broken out in the state following the “gruesome” incident.
The BJP had termed the incident as “more gruesome than the Nirbhaya case” and claimed the Hemant Soren-led government in Jharkhand had “failed miserably” to provide protection to women in the state.
During one such protest at Kishoreganj Chowk in Ranchi on January 4 evening, the convoy of chief minister Soren was attacked.
