A day after the body of an Army officer’s wife was found with her throat slit near Brar Square in the Delhi Cantonment area on Saturday, a joint team of Meerut and Delhi police arrested the accused, an Army Major, on Sunday.

The 35-year-old woman was identified as Shailja Dwivedi, wife of army officer Amit Dwivedi. Her body had been run over by a vehicle several times.

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Prime suspect Nikhil Rai Handa, who is a Major in the Indian Army, was arrested by the police from Meerut in Uttar Pradesh.

Confirming the arrest, Meerut City SP Ranvijay Singh said Major Handa will be taken to Delhi. The accused officer has been taken to an undisclosed location by the police for interrogation.

READ | Violence against women bothers me to the core: Shailja Dwivedi

According to sources, the Delhi Police got clues about the involvement of Major Handa from the mobile details of the victim. Shailja and Major Handa  were seen together on the day of the crime, said the sources.

According to the police, the suspect was a common friend of the couple and is believed to have had fallen out with them over an undisclosed reason. The accused apparently run a car over her face in order to make the incident appear as an accident, the police said.

The victim had left home on Saturday morning for a physiotherapy session at the Army Base Hospital in Delhi Cantonment. She was dropped at the Army Base Hospital in her husband’s official vehicle by a driver, said the police.

Later, when the driver came back to pick her up, he could not find her and learnt that she did not attend her scheduled physiotherapy session, the police said.

Around 1.30 pm, her body was found near the Delhi Cantonment Metro station.

Shailja, who belonged to Amritsar, was a finalist of the Mrs India Earth pageant held in 2017. According to the ‘finalist details’ page of mrsindiaearth.com, which spells her name as Shailza and a detailed interview of her, she had been a lecturer at Guru Nanak Dev University in Amritsar for five years, and had worked with an NGO “Catch and Care” in the past.

She got married to Amit Dwivedi in December 2009 and the couple have a son.

For the Mrs India Earth interview, Shalja had been asked a question about what bothered her most. Ironically, her answer was: “Safety of women in our country needs more effort than what is being done now. The numerous incidents of rape, molestation, acid attacks, domestic violence against women bother me to the core.”