LUDHIANA: In a village on the outskirts of Ludhiana, a crime was uncovered that was as grisly as it was puzzling — a 71-year-old NRI travelled from the US to marry her sunset love, only to allegedly be bludgeoned to death by a man hired by her would-be groom, a 75-year-old settled in the UK.Rupinder Kaur was allegedly killed by the very man whose roof she shared in Kila Raipur village (15km from Ludhiana). Her body was burnt and the remains flung into a nullah, say police. What gave away the gruesome crime was a fresh coat of paint and new floor tiles at the home of the alleged killer, Sukhjit Singh alias Sonu, a typist in Ludhiana district court.Read also: ‘Beaten to death with baseball bat’: Inside the grisly murder of 71-year-old NRI Rupinder Kaur in LudhianaThe case registered by Ludhiana Police names him and UK-based Charanjit Singh. Sukhjit is in custody and charged with murder. Charanjit is in the UK. It’s not known if police have contacted him.Police said Charanjit had backed out of the marriage and got Rupinder killed because she wouldn’t take no for an answer and had threatened to implicate him in a case if he refused. Police sources told TOI the motive was still a grey area.Sukhjit filed a complaint on Aug 18, reporting Rupinder missing. He said she had given her power of attorney to deal with her civil/criminal cases about six months ago, and that she arrived in India in early-July.Sukhjit claimed Rupinder lived in his house for about 10 days and left for Delhi on July 18, saying she would fly to Canada to attend a wedding. However, he claimed he hadn’t been able to contact her since then.Deputy commissioner (city, rural) Rupinder Singh said, “Police found the NRI woman was murdered by Sukhjit at the behest of her NRI friend, Charanjit Singh. Probe revealed she had relations with Charanjit, and he initially wanted to marry her. Rupinder faced an FIR at NRI police station in a cheating case and was declared a proclaimed offender. Charanjit introduced her to Sukhjit for court-related work.”“Rupinder would pay Sukhjit via bank transactions. It is yet to be checked how much and for what purpose,” said the officer. Police say Rupinder and Charanjit met often in India and abroad, and they had their pictures to prove it.Sukhjit claimed Charanjit told him Rupinder threatened to implicate Charanjit in a rape case and Sukhjit in a cheating case. “Charanjit lured Sukhjit by offering him Rs 50 lakh to kill Rupinder. He also offered to call Sukhjit to UK. When Sukhjit agreed to execute the murder, Charanjit asked Rupinder to travel to India, promising to marry her there,” added the officer.On July 12, Sukhjit beat Rupinder to death with a baseball bat. ADCP-II Karanveer Singh said, “The accused got a large amount of coal and started a fire. He put the woman’s body on it to burn it, which took two-three days. He put the skeletal remains in sacks and dumped them in a water channel. He hammered her mobile to pieces and dumped it too. Police have recovered some of the remains and the hammer.”Asked how police cracked the case, a senior officer said since Sukhjit used coal inside his house, the room got damaged. Some labourers from the village were hired to repair it. “The village was already abuzz about the missing NRI woman, and here was a soot-blackened room. It made people suspect him. Someone tipped off police.”TOI contacted Rupinder’s sister Kamal Kaur, who also lives abroad. She said she had approached local police after failing to contact her for several days.Police say Charanjit and Sukhjit had known each other for decades. Charanjit has roots in Ludhiana’s Mehma Singh Wala village, around 5km from Kila Raipur.
