NEW DELHI: A man accused of strangling a 60-year-old woman who had allegedly been pressuring him to marry her was arrested on Sunday, police said.The woman’s body, initially unidentified, was discovered on November 14 along a roadside near the Nagla Bhus trisection in the Chandpa area of Uttar Pradesh’s Hathras district, according to police.The woman was later identified as Joshina, 60.Ten teams were deployed to identify the woman and track down the killer. After reviewing footage from nearly 1,000 CCTV cameras across five districts, police traced the suspect, Imran (45), a resident of Tajganj in Agra, a senior officer said.Superintendent of Police Chiranjeev Nath Sinha said Imran had earlier helped arrange the marriage of Joshina’s daughter Mumtaz to Sattar, an Agra resident. Because Imran’s in-laws lived close to Joshina’s home in West Bengal, the two met often and are believed to have developed a relationship, as cited by PTI.According to police, Joshina had travelled from Kolkata on November 10 to attend her granddaughter’s wedding and visited Imran’s house, where she allegedly pressured him to marry her. Imran refused, saying he was already married and had children.Imran, however, refused her proposal as he was already married with children.During interrogation, he told police that on November 13 he left with Joshina on the pretext of escorting her back to Kolkata. Instead, the two boarded a bus to Agra and later got off at the Nagla Bhus trisection in Hathras.Police said Imran confessed to strangling her there to “get rid of her,” and then attempted to stage the scene to mislead investigators by disheveling her clothes before fleeing.Imran was ultimately arrested near the Hatisa bridge in Hathras on Sunday, and police recovered the victim’s phone after he disclosed where he had hidden it, the officer added.
