Doctor keeps murdered ex-wife 'alive' on social media to mislead cops

The doctor confessed to killing his ex-wife because she was blackmailing him for money and property.

A renowned surgeon from Gorakhpur in Indian state of Uttar Pradesh was arrested for murdering his ex-wife by pushing her off a cliff in Nepal.
In the pre-conspired killing, Dr Dharmendra Pratap Singh kept updating posts on his ex-wife Rakhi Srivastava's social media account for seven months to avoid suspicion.   

Dr Singh, who runs a nursing home in Gorakhpur, was already married when he met Rakhi aka Rajeshwari Srivastav in 2006 and fell in love.
According to Times of India reports, Dr Singh bought Rakhi a house in the city and later secretly married her in 2011. But the two split after Dr Singh's wife, Usha, came to know about illicit relationship and Rakhi then married to a man named Manish in February 2016. But she still remained in touch with Dr Singh and allegedly started black-mailing him for property.     

Hence, Dr Singh along with his two accomplices, Pramod Kumar Singh and Deshdeepak Nishad, conspired a plot to kill Rakhi who was on a trip to Nepal with her husband Manish.
"The woman was missing from Gorakhpur and her brother Amar Prakash Srivastav had lodged a missing complaint with Shahpur police in June against her husband Manish," Uttar Pradesh Special Task Force (STF) IG Amitabh Yash said.

But during the probe, the STF came to know that Rakhi stayed back in Nepal while Manish returned. Later call details of Dr Singh revealed that he too was in Nepal at the time when Rakhi went missing. However, her phone was active at Pokhra in Nepal between June 1 and 4. The STF team visited Pokhra where the local police confirmed that they had recovered a woman's body in the first week of June - later identified to be that of Rakhi.

Dr Singh confessed to killing Rakhi because she was blackmailing him for money and property.
"Dr Singh and his two aides went to Nepal and took Rakhi out where offered her a sedative-laced drink and pushed her off a cliff in Pokhra," the IG said.
He added, "However, even after killing Rakhi, they kept updating her social media account through her mobile phone."

According to details, Rakhi's mobile phone's last location was traced to Guwahati on October 4, around five months after she was killed. This made her family believe that she was in Guwahati until Dr Singh confessed that he had sent the mobile phone to Guwahati through an aide.

• India