Daughter's Drawing Points To 'Murder' After Woman's Death Is Claimed To Be Suicide

The drawing of a 4-year-old girl in India suggests that her mother was murdered by her husband, Sandeep Budholia, after years of abuse.

A drawing made by a four-year-old girl, whose mother was found dead in Uttar Pradesh's Jhansi on Monday, has indicated that the woman was assaulted and murdered by her husband, after years of alleged harassment, the police said, as reporetd by NDTV.

According to the details, the deceased, Sonali Budholia (27) was found dead in her home at Panchavati Shiv Parivar Colony under Kotwali area on Monday.

Initially, the woman's in-laws claimed that she died by suicide. However, an illustration drawing and a statement of the woman's daughter pointed that she was killed by her husband, and her body was hanged to stage it as a suicide.

Darshita, the woman's daughter who performed the last rites said, as quoted by NDTV, "Papa assaulted and killed mummy. He then said 'die if you want to'. He hanged her body and hit her head with a stone. Later, he brought down the body and dumped it inside a sack".

The child further alleged that her father had previously threatened to kill her mother, saying, “I had told him once that if you touch my mother, I will break your hand. He used to beat her, saying she should die and that I should meet the same fate as her."

Narrating the troubling ordeal surrounding Sonali’s marriage, her father Sanjeev Tripathi, a resident of Tikamgarh district in Madhya Pradesh, said that his daughter and Sandeep Budholia got married in 2019. However, the couple since shared a troubled relationship, he added.

"On the wedding day, I gave them Rs 20 lakh in cash as dowry but days later, Sandeep and his family began making new demands. They wanted a car. I told them it is beyond my means to buy them a car. He and his family then started assaulting my daughter. I even approached the police over this once and we had arrived at a compromise," he said.

The couple later had a daughter, however, the family continued to face issues. The woman's in-laws taunted her for not giving birth to a son. Sanjeev said, "Sandeep wanted a boy. After the delivery, he and his family left my daughter alone in the hospital. I had to go to the nursing home to complete the payment. I took her home. Sandeep came a month later to receive Sonali and Darshita."

A senior police official said the woman's body has been sent for an autopsy and the report is awaited. "We got a call about the woman's death at her husband's house under mysterious circumstances. Her parents have alleged that she was murdered. We are probing the case," the officer said.