“Husband forced wife to help dismember business partner’s body”

The confessional statement of Charles Rupom Sarker, the prime accused in the murder of his business partner Helal Uddin, today revealed grisly details of the murder including how he blackmailed his wife Moni Sarker into cutting the victim's body into pieces for easy disposal.

"Helal is dead and you [Moni] are part of this too. Now the body has to be thrown away in pieces and if you do not [help], you will go to jail," Rupom said while recounting in court what he told his wife after the murder, detective branch [DB] sources told The Daily Star.

Moni had initially refused to partake in the gruesome task, but upon her husband's threats helped in chopping the victim into smaller parts with kitchen knives inside their washroom. Once the body was cut into three pieces, the couple placed it into three bags and cleaned up. 

Rupom then hired an auto-rickshaw and threw Helal's head into a dustbin at Jamgora area of Dakshin Khan, before throwing the two remaining parts of the body in two other areas of the capital.

On June 15, police recovered the body parts and four days later a DB team arrested Moni and Rupom's mother Rashida Akhter.

On Sunday night, DB arrested Rupom from Gabtoli and he was placed on a two-day remand, but he gave his confessional statement in court, under section 164, a day before the end of the remand period.

THE MURDER

Helal, 26, mobile financial service and Flexiload shop owner, had gone missing on June 14. After police recovered his body parts a day later, the victim's elder brother filed a case with Dakshin Khan Police Station against unidentified persons.

Kaisar Rezby Koraishy, additional deputy commissioner of DB police, who coordinated the investigation of the gruesome murder, said Helal was looking for a photostat machine. Rupom then called him on his Facebook messenger and said that he had located an old Photostat machine, the deputy commissioner added.

Rupom asked Helal to bring over some money so that they could go and buy the machine, the DB official quoted Rupom as saying.

Rupom, who said he was owed Tk 60,000 by Helal from when they set up their business, had planned to give Helal sedatives and then take the money meant for the photostat machine, the official said.

In his confessional statement, Rupom said he gave Helal a cup of tea laced with sedatives and when the latter lost consciousness, Rupom searched him and found only Tk 253.

Angered, Rupom strangled Helal with a wire, DB sources quoted him as confessing in court.

Rupom was also aware of the pin number on Helal's phone. After the murder, he took the victim's phone and withdrew Tk 43,000 from his mobile account.

Helal gave Tk 30,000 to his wife and sent her to his mother's residence in Dakshin Khan and went into hiding.

In his confession, Rupom told the court he did not realise the crime he was committing at the time, but that he now understood.