Love in the Danger Zone: Understanding Why Romances Turn Fatal

New Delhi, June 4: Mohammad Sahil Khan (20) claimed that he was in love with 16-year-old Sakshi, but Praveen, her ex-boyfriend, had re-entered in her life. This was the moment when insecurities started to grow in his mind (as per his statement to the police) and the duo started having frequent arguments. Recently, Sakshi started to pull herself away from Sahil, as the relationship between them started to sour.

Sahil, who brutally stabbed Sakshi to death in Delhi's Shahbad Dairy area on May 28, has revealed to the investigators that he committed the act out of anger after she began ignoring him. Sahil was caught by the police on May 29 from Bulandshahr in Uttar Pradesh. Delhi Police Takes Shahbad Dairy Murder Accused to Crime Scene, Recreates Sequence of Events.

"Sahil said that Sakshi was allegedly meeting her ex-boyfriend Praveen, with whom she had broken up four years ago but they remained in touch. Sahil confessed to feeling agitated as she ignored him," said a Delhi Police officer. Delhi Girl Murder Case: CM Arvind Kejriwal Approves Rs 10 Lakh Compensation for Family of Brutally Murdered Teenage Girl in Shahbad Dairy Area.

In the CCTV clip of the brutal murder, which went viral, Sahil could be seen stabbing Sakshi repeatedly. Around seven to eight bystanders were present, but none came forward to Sakshi's rescue barring a man wearing a red shirt who was pushed away by Sahil.

After stabbing her, Sahil could be seen kicking the girl multiple times before striking her with a boulder five times. He then briefly leaves the scene but returns shortly after. He strikes the girl with the boulder once again, kicks her multiple times, and then departs from the scene.

In another bone chilling crime of passion, Aftab Ameen Poonawalla, who was also in a relationship with Shraddha Walkar since 2018, strangled her to death after a fight in Delhi's Mehrauli area on May 18, 2022. He then chopped her body into several pieces and disposed of the parts at various locations before getting arrested six months after the crime.

The duo had been in a live-in relationship and had moved to Delhi on May 8, 2022. They stayed in a hotel at Paharganj for seven days and then shifted to a rented house on May 15, just three days before Shraddha was murdered.

Investigators said that in such crimes of passion, the killer remains distressed for at least a month and only then starts getting back to normalcy, though it is remarkable that Aftab worked for months to erase any evidence of his crime.

In simple terms, a crime of passion, derived from the French expression 'crime passionnel', refers to a violent crime, particularly homicide, in which the perpetrator executes the act after getting motivated by a strong grudge, but in one passionate moment, rather than as a premeditated crime.

According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data, from 2017 to 2021, the number of homicides triggered by love affairs gone awry or illicit relationship rose from 2,706 to 3,139 across the country.

In the infamous 'Tandoor Murder' case of 1995, Sushil Sharma, then a youth Congress leader, had shot his partner Naina Sahni in Delhi over suspicion of her having an affair. He then chopped her body and tried to dispose of the body parts by burning them in a tandoor (clay oven) on the roof of a popular restaurant that was managed by his friend.

This was a landmark case in which DNA evidence and a second autopsy were used to prove the accused's guilt. Sushi was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Delhi High Court.

In 2003, Madhumita Shukla, a budding poet, was killed at her home. Madhumani Tripathi, the wife of politician Amarmani Tripathi, who disliked Shukla's involvement with her husband, had planned the murder as a contract killing. Both the conspirator and the murderers were given life imprisonment.

In yet another incident of crime of passion, on May 7, 2008, Neeraj Grover, a senior executive at TV production firm Synergy Adlabs, was stabbed to death at Kannada actor Maria Susairaj's apartment allegedly by her fiance, Emile Jerome Mathew, an ex-Navy officer in Mumbai.

Jerome had flown from the Kochi naval base to Mumbai on May 7 and went to Maria's flat that night where he heard a man's voice. Consumed by jealousy, he killed Neeraj using a knife from Maria's kitchen.

The couple then chopped the body into multiple pieces, stuffed them in two bags and drove to the Manor jungle in Thane to burn them. Maria was imprisoned for three years, while Jerome was sentenced to 10 years in prison after the Mumbai Sessions Court ruled that the murder of Neeraj was not planned.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jun 04, 2023 11:30 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).