Bhubaneswar February 15 : Nayagarh police on Sunday arrested four contract killers who were hired by a man to kill his wife last month. They were identified as Manoj Pradhan (22) of Surasahi and Bhagirathi Maharani (40) Jitendra Sahoo (20) and Tofan Mandal (22) of Golagaon village.
Police said Akhay Mahapatra (37) of Surasahi village in Sarankul had hired the four accused to kill his wife Sasmita. Since their marriage in 2017, Akhay had been harassing Sasmita for dowry.
He also had an illicit relationship with another woman. When Sasmita got to know of the affair, Akhay decided to eliminate her.
In December last year, Akhay hired Manoj to kill Sasmita but the attempt failed. Akhay then approached Bhagirathi and offered him and his associates Rs 2 lakh to kill his wife. He gave an advance of Rs 5,000 to Bhagirathi and promised to pay the rest amount after the job was done.
Bhagirathi along with Jitendra and Tofan tried to murder Sasmita on January 22 but failed. Then on January 29, they went to Akhay’s house and strangulated Sasmita while she was asleep.
The three then hanged her body using a saree to make it look like a suicide.
However, the postmortem report revealed that Sasmita was murdered following which a case was registered. Akhay was arrested by police earlier. Sources said Akhay paid Rs 20,000 to the accused after his wife’s murder and refused to pay the rest of the amount.