<![CDATA[NEW DELHI: A 35-year-old man was strangled and stabbed to death, and his body set on fire two days later, allegedly by his girlfriend and her husband, in east Delhi's Gandhi Nagar. The couple kept the body in a room on the terrace of a temple, where the accused man was a priest, for two days before confessing the crime during police interrogation. According to police, the priest, Lakhan Dubey (30), learnt of his wife Kamlesh's (30) illicit relationship with the victim, Chandrashekhar (35), and asked his wife to come to Delhi from Mathura, where she had been staying. In Delhi, Dubey housed her in the same room where they later murdered Chandrashekhar. For a week he kept asking his wife if she was involved with the man in any way, but she constantly denied any relationship. A few days later, when Dubey went to her with proof of her infidelity, she broke down and confessed she was in a relationship with Chandrashekhar. Infuriated, Dubey asked his wife to sever all ties with the man. She agreed, but they went much further: she and her husband hatched a plan to kill Chandrashekhar, according to police. Kamlesh called up Chandrashekhar on Sunday morning and told him she was alone in Delhi as her husband had gone to another city . She asked him to come to Delhi but to tell his family he was going to meet a friend in Agra. On Sunday evening, Chandrashekhar wentto the place where Kamlesh was living. Minutes later, Dubey , too, entered the room, and, after administering a severe beating, confined him to the room and the couple left. The husband and wife returned two hours later and force-fed Chandrashekhar food laced with poison, police said. When the poison didn't kill him, they strangled him with a nylon rope and, to ensure death, stabbed him a couple of times in the head. A senior police officer told Dubey and Kamlesh had been planning for two days to dispose of the body but the heavy rush at the temple in the day and heavy police presence at night prevented them. On Wednesday morning, when the stench of the decomposing body became unbearable, the couple set the body on fire. "We thought that if we burnt him, nobody would be able to recognise him and we would get away with it," a senior police officer quoted Dubey as saying. Dubey then informed the police he had found a body in a terrace room at the temple. Police then sent the charred body for a post-mortem examination. Once he was identified, police questioned Dubey and his wife, who broke down and confessed to having killed Chandrashekhar. The Police immediately registered a case against the couple and arrested both of them.]]>
