Jhansi woman's death after hotel collapse: Father alleges murder, police await post-mortem

JHANSI: A 26-year-old woman died a day after she collapsed at a hotel in Uttar Pradesh's Jhansi district, with her father accusing her husband of pushing her to death, PTI reported.

Additional Superintendent of Police (City) Preeti Singh identified the deceased as Muskan, who had come to her father's home in Jhansi to prepare for a railway junior engineer examination scheduled for October 28, The Times of India reported.

According to police, Muskan's husband Nilesh, a resident of Vidisha in Madhya Pradesh, took her to a hotel on Sipri Road on Friday night. She collapsed suddenly the next morning while the couple were checking out, and was rushed to the district hospital, where she died during treatment.

CCTV footage from the hotel shows Muskan entering the room with Nilesh and a hotel employee; within seconds, she falls backwards near the doorway, after which Nilesh is seen carrying her inside. Singh said the footage shows Muskan "falling after she slipped," but that the exact circumstances would only be established after the post-mortem report.

Muskan's father, Ramji Lal Ahirwar, has questioned the sequence of events, pointing to injuries on her head and alleging his daughter was assaulted. He has accused Nilesh of murder and demanded a thorough investigation.

Ahirwar alleged that the family had learnt after the wedding that Nilesh was already married, with his first wife living in Indore, and said this had led to frequent quarrels between the couple.

Police have detained Nilesh for questioning. Sipri Bazar police station in-charge JP Chaubey said no written complaint had been received from the family as of Sunday, and that the body had been sent for post-mortem examination, PTI reported.

The allegation against Nilesh has not been established, and investigators are yet to determine the cause of death.