Dhar (Madhya Pradesh): Many skeletons have started tumbling out in the Pooja Chauhan murder case. Pooja Chouhan was shot in broad daylight on Wednesday.
On Thursday, both the victim and accused’s family hurled accusations and blamed each other for the murder.
The Dhar police that had been sitting pretty on Pooja’s complaint of harassment turned super active only after her murder. The house of accused Deepak was demolished on Wednesday afternoon. A reward of Rs 10,000 was announced in the evening and accused Deepak Rathore was arrested late in the night the same day after a brief encounter. Rathore suffered bullet injury in his leg during the encounter.
The police action has become talk of the town. Many are questioning police action stating that had the cops turned active soon after the complaint, Pooja would still have been alive.
Dhar Superintendent of Police Manoj Kumar Singh said that acting on leads a police team traced the accused near Mandu village and cornered him late on Wednesday night. The police asked him to surrender, but he tried to escape and fired at them. The police then shot at him in the leg in self-defence and arrested the accused. The accused was immediately taken to a nearby hospital. The police seized a pistol and a motorcycle from the spot, he said.
SP Singh said that, in 2020, the deceased had submitted a complaint under Section 354 (assault or use of criminal force to any woman, intending to outrage her modesty) of the Indian Penal Code against Rathore. In 2021, she lodged another complaint against him for attacking her.
Rathore lodged a complaint of abetment to suicide against the girl and her family members after his mother committed suicide by consuming poison. The accused had claimed his mother took her life as Pooja refused to marry him and her kin supported her, police said.
Meanwhile, while Pooja’s family members accused Deepak Rathore of harassing her for the last two years and even threatening to kill her in the middle of the road, Deepak's paternal uncle Ramchandra Rathore accused Pooja and her family of harassing his nephew and his family members. Rathore even questioned the police's swift action after the crime.
Speaking to Free Press, Ramchandra made some serious revelations. He said that everyone was claiming that my nephew harassed the girl. He was a jilted lover and had one-sided love affair, but they (Deepak and Pooja) were in love and she was in a live-in relationship with him.
Ramchandra stated that they were ready for marriage, but girl's mother, who was initially open to the marriage proposal, eventually declined once Deepak's family members arrived at her house with the proposal.
Ramchandra Rathore said that the girl's mother demanded Rs 2 lakh from them. He even provided photographs of Deepak and Pooja looking happy together.
In response to police action against his nephew, Ramchandra said that after demolishing Deepak's house in the afternoon he shared Deepak's whereabouts to the police to prevent any more harm to the family members.
“Later in the night, we learned that Deepak was injured in a cross fire and apprehended in a hamlet near Mandu,” he said.
Hardly any one believes the police story. According to sources, Dhar SP and his team took some media personnel with them to arrest Deepak. When contacted, SP Singh said that journalists arrived at the location later.
