In a gruesome case of grooming jihad, Shakib and his family had chopped Ekta Deshwal into pieces and buried her in a field. The accused have now been granted bail as the judiciary held that they had ‘no criminal history’. The crime took place in 2019 but it took the Meerut police an year to crack the case.
Ekta’s family is unaware of the status of the case as they aren’t financially capable of following it up. Her mother Seema Deshwal said that they didn’t pursue the case due to their weak economic status and as Meerut was far away. She added that Shakib had usurped all their gold which is yet to be recovered by the police. Furthermore, she says she is scared of Muslims ever since her daughter’s murder.
The case is presently in the Chief Judicial Magistrate’s (CJM) court with the next hearing scheduled to be held on December 2. Subsequently, the case will be moved to the District judge’s court and later determined which sessions judge will hear the case. Government lawyer’s are appearing on the victim’s behalf and Ekta’s mother will be called for testimonial. OpIndia says SHO Daurala RK Pachauri confirmed that all the nine accused were granted bail.
Shakib says he was pressurized to confess
Ishmat was the first accused to be given bail. Her bail was rejected by the sessions court but later granted by the Prayagraj (Allahabad) High Court on July 10, 2020. Bail was granted by Justice Siddharth’s bench citing lack of criminal history of the accused and added that the police hadn’t made any strong recovery from her. Subsequently, accused Musharrat got bail on similar grounds and on September 3, 2020, the high court gave bail to Mustakim.
The Prayagraj (Allahabad) HC bench of Pradeep Kumar Shrivastava heard the bail plea of the main accused Shakib on January 13, 2021. His counsel argued that the deceased had voluntarily eloped with Shakib and was residing happily with him. He also claimed that the confession that got him jailed was recorded in police presence and given under pressure. He informed the court that he had no criminal record.
The court held that the police had no concrete evidence to keep Shakib in jail and granted him bail on the basis of his arguments. After Shakib’s bail, the remaining five accused were given bail on different dates.
The case – how Shakib lured Ekta
“It took a year for the cops to solve the murder case of a headless and armless body discovered by a farmer named Suresh in Meerut’s Lohia village on 13th June 2019. The entire village was shaken when a woman’s naked and dismembered body was found buried. The murder came to light when Suresh (Ishwar Pandit as per News18 report) saw stray dogs fishing out a severed arm from the ground from the field of one Ahmed”, HinduPost had highlighted earlier.
Police investigations revealed Shakib met Ekta who had taken up a part-time job as an event manager, against the wishes of her family, in early 2019. He identified himself as Aman pretending to be a Hindu in an attempt to conceal his Muslim identity. Shakib was a school dropout working as an assistant in a shop in Ludhiana that sold talismans.
As per reports, he was into occult practices (vashikaran tantra) as well. Love blossomed between the two and Shakib convinced Ekta to elope with him. The two then ran away after Ekta took away jewelry worth 25 lakhs rupees from her home. The two lived together for about a month at a rented apartment in Karnal district where Shakib set up his occult practice’s office.
Shakib later took Ekta to his home in Meerut where she came to know of his Muslim identity leading to a fight between the two. He calmed her, took her out under the pretext of a stroll, spiked her drink, and murdered the unconscious girl.
He then unclothed the body, chopped it into pieces and erased all identity markers. Six people have been arrested in this case including Shakib, his father, brother, sister-in-law and other family members.
(Featured Image Source: SwarajyaMag)
