Bihar Newlywed Kills Husband in Meghalaya Honeymoon Murder Rerun

A 25-year-old man in Bihar's Aurangabad district was allegedly murdered by his wife and her maternal uncle just 45 days after their wedding, in a case that resembles the recent Meghalaya honeymoon murder in uncanny ways.

According to the police, the woman planned a contract assassination to get rid of her husband and keep up her extramarital affair.

On the evening of June 24, Priyanshu Kumar Singh, the deceased, was shot and killed while traveling back from Varanasi. He had just arrived at the railway station in Nabinagar when he told his wife, Gunja Singh, also known as Gunja Devi, to make arrangements for a ride. Two men ambushed and killed him moments later, according to NDTV.

When police discovered that Gunja, who was in her 20s, had reportedly planned the murder in coordination with her 55-year-old maternal uncle, Jeevan Singh, the investigation—which had initially treated the case as a contract killing—took a sinister turn. Gunja and Jeevan allegedly painstakingly plotted the murder, purportedly inspired by the Meghalaya case in which a bride was accused of killing her husband while on honeymoon.

Ambarish Rahul, the superintendent of police for Aurangabad, claimed that Gunja and Jeevan Singh had been having an extramarital affair for 15 years. Under pressure from her family, who disapproved of her relationship with Singh, she reluctantly married Priyanshu in May. Motivated by the recent Meghalaya honeymoon case and unable to conceal the affair, she allegedly made the decision to kill her husband.

Police claim that Gunja and her uncle carefully plotted the murder. Jaishankar Chaubey and Mukesh Sharma, two accomplices from the nearby Jharkhand area of Garhwa, assisted in the crime. They organized the logistics of the murder and obtained SIM cards.

After talking to Priyanshu that evening, Gunja allegedly gave the murderers his whereabouts. The gunmen, waiting for him on his way home, shot him dead. His remains were found soon after.

After the murder, Gunja apparently tried to leave the village, which led to suspicion. To look into the matter, a Special Investigation Team (SIT) was established. After her cell phone was confiscated, call logs showed that she and her uncle, as well as Jeevan Singh and the gunmen, were in continuous contact.