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A 21-year-old Delhi woman, whose body was found stuffed in a travel bag in Mathura three days ago, was shot dead allegedly by her father as the family was not happy since she got married without their approval, the police said Monday.
The woman's mother knew about the killing and had helped the father in disposing of their daughter's body along the Yamuna Expressway in Mathura in the early hours on November 18, they said.
Both the parents have been arrested and sent to jail, while the weapon used in the crime has also been recovered, the police told reporters in Mathura as it cracked the suspected honour killing case.
"Ayushi had a fight with her father on November 17. She had got married to a man of her choice because of which her family was unhappy. Enraged over this, her father had shot her twice on November 17 after the argument," acting Senior Superintendent of Police Martand Prakash Singh said.
Ayushi had a brother who also knew about the act. After Ayushi died, her mother Brajbala Yadav had helped her father Nitesh Yadav stuff the daughter's body in a trolley bag and accompanied him to dump the body on a service road in Raya near the Vrindavan cut along the Expressway, some 150 km away from their Badapur home.
"The parents had kept the body in their house (at Modband village in Badarpur, Delhi) during the night and left home around 3 am in their own car. They had stuffed the body in a red-coloured trolley bag, dumped it in Mathura and fled back," Singh told reporters.
The body, which was wrapped in plastic sheets, was found in the morning of November 18 after locals alerted the police about it.
"The victim's father Nitesh Yadav and mother Brajbala Yadav have been arrested and sent to jail. They have been booked under Indian Penal Code sections 302 (murder) and 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of offence, or giving false information, to screen offender)," Singh said.
"Brajbala Yadav may not have shot her daughter, but she was involved in disposing of the body and had accompanied her husband to Mathura in the car," the officer added.
After an FIR was lodged, 14 police teams were pushed into investigating the case and they began tracing phones, checked CCTV footage, used social media and also put up posters in Delhi to identify the woman, he said.
Concrete information about Ayushi, however, was received from an unidentified caller on Sunday morning, and later, her mother and brother identified her through photographs.
They also arrived at the mortuary in Mathura and confirmed it was Ayushi's body, the police said.
The family is a native of Baluni in Uttar Pradesh's Gorakhpur and migrated to the national capital after Nitesh Yadav found a job there.
Singh said when the police quizzed the mother and the father, discrepancy were found in their statements, which blew the lid off the case and they admitted to having killing their daughter.
"The woman was an adult and had chosen on her own to marry a man, identified as Chhatrapal. They had got married in an Arya Samaj temple and her family was unhappy because of this. She would also leave home often without informing her parents," Singh said.
He added that though she had got married, she was staying with her parents in Delhi only.
Earlier on Monday, the Delhi Commission For Women took suo-motu cognizance of the case and issued a notice to the Mathura police, seeking the copies of the FIR and the autopsy report along with details of her accused father Nitesh Yadav by November 24.