Haryana: Woman sentenced to lifetime in jail for murdering her look-alike to fake own death

The accused, identified as Jyoti, had murdered a woman named Simran back in 2017 so she could elope with her boyfriend Krishna without drawing any suspicion or action from her family members who were opposed to their marriage.

Panipat:A Panipat court on Wednesday sentenced a woman to life imprisonment for trying to fake her own death by murdering another woman who looked similar to her. The accused, identified as Jyoti, had murdered a woman named Simran back in 2017 so she could elope with her boyfriend Krishna without drawing any suspicion or action from her family members who were opposed to their marriage.

As informed by police officials, Jyoti and Krishna knew each other from college and were in love with each other. However, when they approached Jyoti's family for their marriage, the family strictly denied it. The couple then decided to go ahead and elope together. In order to get rid of any suspicion from Jyoti's family, they decided to fake her death before running away, informed Advocate Azam Khan, the victim's lawyer.

Inspired by a crime TV series, the couple decided to kill someone who resembled Jyoti's physical features and pose her as Jyoti's corpse. Krishna found a girl named Simran whom he knew as his fellow college-mate. The couple finalised their victim whom Krishna, as an acquaintance, asked to meet in a Gaushala on GT road in the city on September 5, 2017.

The victim Simran was then given a cold drink laced with intoxicants, which made her unconscious. The couple then strangled Simran to death. Jyoti changed the corpse's clothes into hers and poured acid on her face to ruin her facial features beyond identity. Jyoti also left some of her identity documents with Simran's corpse to misguide her family and the police into believing that the body is indeed Jyoti's. The couple then fled to Shimla and started staying in a hotel there, Advocate Khan said.

Meanwhile, Jyoti's parents lodged a missing complaint with the Panipat police. Officials showed Simran's dead body to Jyoti's family who recognised the clothes and documents as Jyoti's. The couple's plan almost worked as Jyoti's family believed the corpse to be hers and performed the final rites.

However, Simran's parents, also worried about their daughter's sudden disappearance, lodged a missing complaint. When the police showed the same photo to Simran's family based on suspicion, her mother identified a blue thread tied around the body's wrist and a nose pin as Simran's. Further investigation confirmed that the body was indeed Simran's, not Jyoti's.

The police then filed a murder case and started looking for Jyoti and Krishna. It took them no time to trace Krishna's phone location in Shimla, and both were arrested there soon after. In 2020, during the trial itself, Krishna died of tuberculosis in jail, while Jyoti underwent the rest of the trial.

A total of 26 people testified in the case and the court convicted Jyoti on Tuesday, March 28. The next day, Jyoti was sentenced to life imprisonment, along with a fine of Rs 70,000. Simran's mother, Usha Dubey hailed the court for 'delivering justice for her daughter'.