Man who beheaded a woman, arrested

Ranchi, Jan.14 (HS): Sheikh Belal, who had allegedly beheaded a woman, Sufia Parveen, and dumped her nude body near Sai Nath University under Ormanjhi police station area, was arrested on Thursday from Kute village under the same police station.

Breakthrough came after senior superintendent of police S.K.Jha got a tip off and swung into action.  After arrest, Belal was taken to the spot to explain how he committed the crime. Following which police took him to an undisclosed location for further interrogation in the matter.

S.P. (rural) Naushad Ahmed confirmed the arrest but expressed his inability to divulge further details in the connection. “Interrogation is still on. Entire thing will be shared to the media tomorrow organizing a press conference,” Ahmed said.

However, information reaching through different sources so far, suggests that the murder was outcome of soured relationship of Parveen with Sufia.

Sufia, a resident of Chanho, had married Belal, who was already. After marriage, Sufia started mounting pressure on Belal to divorce his first wife. This caused a rift. The Sufia knocked on the door of the police in June last year. Police arrested Belal and sent to jail. After Belal was sent to jail, Sufia married another married man. After Belal bailed out after 10 months of imprisonment, he committed the cruel murder.

He, with the help of some of his friends, beheaded Sufia before attacking her face 11 times with a sharp edged weapon. He left the headless body of Sufia at Ormanjhi and buried her head in a crop field near his house in Pithoria, about 3km from body, on January 2. On January 3, the headless body of Sufia was recovered.

It became difficult for police to get any clue in this murder. Police kept on declaring awards. On January 4 it declared an award of Rs 25000 for the clue and kept on increasing it up to Rs 5 lakh. But it did not yield a proper result and police remained under severe criticism for its poor investigation capacity.

SSP Jha then asked police officials to identify those families from where the girl is missing but no FIR has been registered. The idea worked and parents of Sufia were searched. They were taken near the body. They identified the body of their daughter with a burn mark on her leg. As body was identified, police became active and started looking for the suspected killer, Belal, whose photograph was also released.

As the photograph was released, it became difficult for Belal to get shelter. Meanwhile police on January 12 also recovered the head of the woman and then on January 13 the shovel used in digging hole. Finally Belal was arrested from Kute, about 17km from the place of occurence.

As far as background of Belal is concerned as many as 11 cases under different sections including murder and keeping illegal arms against him have been registered against him at different police stations.