NEW DELHI - Double murder accused Ravi Kapoor claims IT executive Jigisha Ghosh offered to part with hundreds of thousands of rupees, jewellery and other valuables in the hope that she could live to take care of her aged parents, say Delhi Police.

‘Jigisha offered her jewellery and all valuables to us. She said she has savings of Rs.800,000 in the bank and we can also take that, as long as we spared her life for the sake of her old parents. She said except her there was no one to take care of them,’ an investigating officer told IANS quoting Kapoor.

Jigisha, 28, was kidnapped from outside her Vasant Vihar apartment in south Delhi in the wee hours of March 17 and murdered soon after. Kapoor and his accomplices were arrested for the shocking crime. Jigisha was the only child of her parents. Her father is a retired government employee.

‘She was scared and kept pleading before us all the way. There was a moment when she said we can have her and do anything. Sobbing, she said she could compromise and would not reveal our identities if we spared her life,’ Kapoor was quoted as saying.

‘But we felt that she could spill the beans and help police prepare our sketches. We smothered her to death to protect our identities.’

Doctors at the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Science (PGIMS) at Rohtak who conducted the autopsy on her had hinted that the victim could have been sexually assaulted because of injuries on her face and lips.

But investigating officers in Delhi have ruled out all such possibilites.

Police said Jigisha was talking on the phone and walking towards her first floor apartment after being dropped by a cab hired by her office, Hewitt Associates, around 4.30 a.m. March 17.

Police say the killers forced her into a car and took the road to Mahipalpur, where they withdrew Rs.20,000 from an SBI ATM with the victim’s HDFC Bank debit card. They withdrew another Rs.5,000 from a Union Bank of India ATM at Saket. Then they drove towards towards Bhatkal Lake in Delhi’s satellite town of Faridabad to dump her body. Jigisha’s body was found on the morning of March 20.

After dumping her body, the killers drove back to Delhi and went shopping with her credit cards. They shopped for nearly Rs.80,000 at three or four outlets in the Sarojini Nagar market.

Police say the same men were also behind the murder of television journalist Soumya Vishwanathan. Soumya, 25, was returning to her Vasant Kunj home Sep 30 last year when Kapoor and his accomplices gunned her down on Nelson Mandela Marg in south Delhi.

‘The killers were very sharp. Kapoor said after killing Soumya he had visited the scene on Nelson Mandela Marg with a walkie-talkie in his hand. He inquired with a constable about the murder, the way a policeman checks with his colleagues,’ said a police officer.

‘When the constable told him there had been an accident here, Kapoor was quick in his reply, asking if it was an accident then why were crime investigation officials at the spot. The constable then replied that something was fishy about the case and he himself was not clear about it.’

‘In the afternoon, Kapoor went to the Vasant Kunj police station where Soumya’s car was parked. All the senior officials as well as a large number of media were present at the police station. He was there for some time,’ said the officer.

Seeing the gravity of the crimes, police have now invoked the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crimes Act (MCOCA) against Kapoor and his accomplices Amit Shukla,

Baljeet Malik, Vijay Kumar and Ajay Sethi - all of whom hail from south Delhi.

(Sahil Makkar can be contacted at sahil.m@ians.in)