Indore: A six-month-old murder was uncovered in Dewas, Madhya Pradesh, thanks to the curiosity of a tenant frustrated with high electricity bills. The gruesome discovery was made in a rented room in a two-storey house in Vrindavan Dham, owned by businessman Dhirendra Shrivastava, who has been residing in Dubai for the past six months.
The house had been rented by Sanjay Patidar, who vacated the premises in June 2024, leaving two rooms locked, claiming he would return to collect his belongings. Among the items left behind was a refrigerator, which concealed the decomposed body of Pinky alias Pratibha Prajapati, Patidar's live-in partner.
The murder came to light when Balveer Rajput, the new tenant, took the ground floor on rent in July 2024. Repeatedly requesting the landlord to use the other room for his family, he eventually gained permission to unlock the rooms. On Thursday, Rajput broke the lock and entered the room, finding the refrigerator running. Suspecting the previous tenant's "carelessness" was the cause of his unusually high electricity bills, he switched it off, only to be met with a foul smell from the rotten body in the fridge the next morning.
The police were alerted to the foul smell, and upon arriving at the scene, they found the decomposed body of Pratibha Prajapati wrapped in a bedsheet inside the refrigerator. Patidar, the prime suspect, was arrested on Friday, and he confessed to the crime. According to ASP Jaiveer Bhadoria, Patidar strangled Pratibha during an argument over her insistence on marriage, despite knowing he was already married with children. He, along with his friend Vinod Dave, stuffed her body into the refrigerator and locked the room before fleeing.
Forensic experts have collected evidence from the scene, and a postmortem examination was conducted. The police are coordinating with Rajasthan authorities to question Vinod Dave, who is currently in jail in Tonk for another crime.
