Indian TV helps solve Nepali woman\’s murder

KATHMANDU - A woman gangraped for nearly three days before being strangled to death in a hotel in an Indian city has been identified as a 35-year-old Nepali housewife and her killers as a trio from a border town of Nepal, thanks to a programme aired by an Indian television channel.

Nepal police solved the disappearance of Nirmala Shrestha, married to Ajay Shrestha, who runs a hotel in Nepalgunj town in southern Nepal on the border with India, after the Aaj Tak television channel, hugely popular in Nepal, aired the news of a mysterious murder in an Indian hotel, Nepal’s official media reported Tuesday.

When Nirmala disappeared Aug 19, taking with her money and gold ornaments worth about NRS 200,000, her husband informed police.

The search for the missing woman gathered momentum after Aaj Tak reported that a woman had been found murdered in the Tulsi Hotel in India’s Lucknow city.

She was killed Aug 22, three days after she vanished from Nepal.

Investigations led Nepal police to the trail of two men who were alleged to have had an illicit relationship with her.

While one of them - Sonu Halwai, a petty trader - has been arrested, the other, Akram Halwai, a tailor, is absconding along with a third accomplice, Rafiq Behna, the Gorkhapatra daily said Tuesday.

According to police, Sonu told his interrogators that the housewife was killed by Akram because she was pressuring him to marry her.

He decoyed her away to the Lucknow hotel and informed Akram and Rafiq, who then raped her before Akram strangled her to death Aug 22.

According to Sonu, they were all sleeping in the same room at night when he was awakened by a sound.

He saw Akram strangling Nirmala in the nearby bed and when he tried to intervene, Akram threatened to kill him as well, Sonu told police.

Sonu was arrested when he returned to Nepalgunj while the other two men are on the run.

Nepal has sent a police team to Lucknow for further investigations, the daily