A 44-year-old diamond and car businessman from Pune who was purportedly in a relationship with a woman from Kolkata was killed by her and her partner at a fancy hotel in Guwahati last week. The defendants were apprehended on Tuesday.
During one of his business visits in September 2023, Sandeep Suresh Kamble met 25-year-old Anjali Shaw at the Kolkata airport lounge and they became close.
They spent time together in hotels in Kolkata and Pune, and Sandeep snapped numerous images of their personal encounters with his mobile phone.
Their relationship soured when Sandeep, who is already married with a 14-year-old son, asked Anjali, a Class XII pass who works at a café within the Kolkata airport, to marry him. She rejected, stating that she was already in a relationship with Vikash Kumar Shaw (30) from Kolkata and planned to marry him instead.
According to police, Sandeep got enamoured with Anjali, and when all of his attempts to persuade her failed, he began collecting phone numbers from Anjali and Vikash’s family members and sent personal images to those individuals.
Meanwhile, Anjali and Vikash, an engineering college dropout working for his family’s scrap iron business in Kolkata, plotted to steal Sandeep’s phone, preventing him from accessing the images.
Anjali invited Sandeep to visit Kolkata, but the businessman sensed something was wrong and requested her to accompany him to Guwahati. She complied but privately told Vikash of the change of plans. Sandeep and Anjali arrived at Guwahati Airport on Monday and proceeded directly to the Hotel Radisson Blu, where they had reserved a room. Meanwhile, Vikash arrived at the hotel separately and went to another room on a different floor. Around 3.45pm, hotel staff received a call from an unknown number stating that a visitor in one room had become ill and required immediate medical attention.
“After receiving the call, hotel authorities entered the said room only to find the victim lying on the floor in a pool of blood,” Guwahati police commissioner Diganta Barah stated. Cops were alerted, and after reviewing the hotel’s CCTV footage, they discovered Anjali and Vikash leaving the premises in a taxi. Police initiated a manhunt and issued notifications at all exit points around the state, including the railway station and airport.
Around 5.45pm, cops at a police frisking point outside the airport spotted and nabbed the accused, who had pre-booked tickets for the 9.15pm IndiGo aircraft to Kolkata. During questioning, the duo admitted to the crime but claimed it wasn’t deliberate, saying they merely wanted to overpower Sandeep and steal his phone.
Police stated the cause of the murder could only be determined by the forensics report.
