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Suhaib Ilyasi getting jail for killing wife is a crime story straight out of India's Most Wanted

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DailyBiteDec 20, 2017 | 21:31

Suhaib Ilyasi getting jail for killing wife is a crime story straight out of India's Most Wanted

Suhaib Ilyasi and Anju Ilyasi were married in London in 1993.

On December 20, Suhaib Ilyasi, the former host of the famous crime show India’s Most Wanted, was sentenced to life imprisonment for killing his wife, Anju Ilyasi.

The verdict marks the end of a 17-year-long saga, from Anju’s death being treated as a suicide by a temperamental woman” and her family publicly supporting Suhaib, to Anju’s sister Rashmi Singh taking up cudgels for her, a custody battle over the couple’s daughter Aaliya, and Suhaib finally being booked and tried for murder.         

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Ilyasi had become a household name after India’s Most Wanted hit television screens in 1998. While the show spawned a whole genre of sensationalised crime TV programmes, Ilyasi’s own story is more dramatic than most on-screen tales.

The marriage

Ilyasi and Anju’s marriage was the stuff Bollywood thrives on – two young, good-looking people met at the country’s elite university Jamia Millia Islamia in the late '80s, and fell in love.

They came from very different family backgrounds – Anju’s father KP Singh was a professor at IIT Kanpur and frequently travelled abroad for lectures, Suhaib’s father Jameel Ilyasi was the head of All India Imams Organisation and the imam of a mosque at Kasturba Gandhi Marg in Delhi.

Both the families opposed their romance, and the couple, in 1993, eloped to London and got married. They later had a nikaah, too, and Anju changed her name to Afsan. They moved back to India in 1994. The couple had conceptualised India’s Most Wanted together, and Anju was the anchor in the pilot episodes. After a few years of struggle, the show took off, propelling Suhaib to stardom.

Several criminals were arrested after Suhaib featured them in his show, and at one point, he was given police protection after he claimed to be getting threats from the underworld. The show continued even after Suhaib ran into problems with Zee, moving to Doordarshan as Fugitive Most Wanted.

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However, his marriage was going through problems.

Anju had refused to stay in his house after the couple returned to India in 1994, and within months, went to her brother Prashant’s home in London. Prashant helped the couple resolve their differences, and in 1995, their daughter Aaliya was born.

Ilyasi had become a household name after India’s Most Wanted hit television screens in 1998. Photo: India Today
Ilyasi had become a household name after India’s Most Wanted hit television screens in 1998. Photo: India Today

They hit another rough patch some years later, and Anju again left, going to her elder sister’s house in Ottawa, Canada. However, Suhaib went to Canada in October 1998, and convinced her to come back. The couple bought a home in east Delhi and 25 per cent shares of Suhaib’s Aaliya Productions were transferred to Anju.

Less than two years later, six days before her 30th birthday, Anju was found dead, with stab wounds.

The legal battle

Anju’s death was initially treated as suicide. Suhaib told the police the couple had had a quarrel, and he was playing with Aaliya when Anju stabbed herself. He alerted the police constables posted for his protection and took her to the hospital, where she was declared dead.

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Anju’s family stood by her husband, with her father telling the police she had been of a “temperamental nature.” Suhaib even moved in with his in-laws, so the bereaved family could be together in grief.

However, things changed after Rashmi returned to India from Canada in February the same year. She said she had been the last person Anju spoke to, and began pushing for action against Suhaib, saying he drove her sister to suicide.

Suhaib was arrested on March 28, 2000 and booked with harassing his wife for dowry under Sections 498A and 304B of the Indian Penal Code. His arrest reportedly caused friction within Anju’s family, with her father and brother still sticking up for Suhaib, but her mother supporting Rashmi.

Suhaib claimed his in-laws were trying to take his daughter away from him and send her to Ottawa with Rashmi, who ran a Montessori school there.  

After the trial court twice rejected the plea for charges of murder to be added against Ilyasi, Anju’s mother Rukma Singh moved the Delhi High Court in 2011. The murder charge was added in 2014, and after the Supreme Court rejected Suhaib’s appeal against it, he was convicted on December 16 and sentenced on Wednesday.

The court noted several discrepancies in Suhaib’s statements – he had claimed that Anju stabbed herself, but her dress was not torn; there had been bloodstains on a bed sheet that he explained as “menstrual blood”, which was found to be untrue; Suhaib had said he “snatched a revolver from Anju, emptied it and threw it behind the bed”, but it was found on a shelf – and problems in the post-mortem report of Anju.  

Ilyasi’s life after Most Wanted

While Rashmi’s lawyer has been quoted as saying that Suhaib killed Anju as she was aware of his “illegal acts and financial misdeeds” and wanted to move to Canada with her child, after the verdict on December 20, Ilyasi broke down and said he was innocent and this was “injustice”.

When Suhaib was arrested in 2000, his show was at the peak of its popularity. After getting embroiled in the trial and the custody battle, he tried to restart the programme in 2005, but it did not do well.

He also forayed into movies, appearing as himself in Shah Rukh Khan-starrer Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani, and making Kamyab Rasta and 498A: The Wedding Gift.

He also runs a magazine called Bureaucracy Today, which, according to him, “deals with governance and corporate affairs and our investigative journalism has led to the suspension of four chairmen of public sector unit”.

Last year, he was in the news for launching a movie called Ghar Wapsi, which was to mark the acting debut of Pakistani ghazal maestro Ghulam Ali.    

As Ilyasi prepares to face a life term in jail, the fate of his projects is unclear, but the verdict has closed curtains on a 17-year-long story.

Last updated: April 27, 2018 | 13:03
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