New Delhi: Minutes after allegedly murdering his fellow officer’s wife on Saturday, Major Nikhil Rai Handa called up one of his ‘girlfriends’ in Delhi and allegedly told her about the crime, a media report says.
A police officer, who interrogated Major Nikhil Handa, arrested on Sunday, went through the content on his mobile phones and said the accused Army Major had at least three girlfriends in Delhi.
“He is most attached to this woman. But when he told her about killing Shailza Dwivedi, she thought he was bluffing and disconnected the phone. She did not feel the need to alert the police,” a news agency quoted the officer saying.
The woman was questioned by the police but she was ignorant about Major Nikhil Handa’s crime, which investigators said was “preplanned”.
“The woman is a divorcee and has grown-up children. We tried to ensure her relatives or neighbours did not get a whiff about her relations with Handa,” the news agency quoted the officer who is not authorised to talk to the media.
Army Major Nikhil Handa had befriended some of these women in 2015 by allegedly creating a fake Facebook profile to send friend requests to women.
“Handa had come across Shailza’s Facebook profile while surfing from the fake account but did not send a friend request when he realised she too was the wife of an Indian Army Major (Major Amit Dwivedi). Instead, he met her directly during a get-together,” said the officer.
Major Nikhil Handa told his interrogators that Shailza was ‘obsessed’ with him but her family as well as the police maintained that it was the other way round.
Police said she was killed for objecting to his marriage proposal and unwanted advances.
“Each of these women he has had an affair with or was chasing had a faint idea of his multiple affairs but he was able to convince them to continue their relationships with him,” said the interrogator.
According to reports, Major Nikhil Handa arrived in Delhi on June 4 on the pretext of getting himself treated for migraine. Instead, he was using the opportunity to allegedly confront and interact with Shailza at the Army’s base hospital in Delhi cantonment where she was visiting for physiotherapy sessions.
It was the visit to the Army hospital that revealed Major Handa. “When Shailza’s husband Amit Dwivedi could not contact his wife on Saturday, he visited the hospital and requested to see CCTV footage. In the footage, Amit spotted Handa. He was alerted as Handa was posted in Dimapur in Nagaland and wasn’t supposed to be in Delhi,” the news agency quoted the investigator saying.
Since Major Amit Dwivedi was well aware of the alleged unwanted attention his wife was receiving from his fellow officer, Major Nikhil Handa, he approached the police who informed him of his wife’s murder.
Major Amit Dwivedi then immediately pointed the finger of suspicion at Major Nikhil Handa.
Prasanta Patnaik 
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