Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): On the quiet and cold night of January 29, 2024 commuters near a guest house in Koh-e-Fiza area heard a faint crying sound coming from a patch of bushes at around 10 pm.
The passers-by went closer — and were shocked by what they saw. A little girl, about seven or eight years old, lay on the ground bleeding heavily. Her throat had a deep cut and blood had soaked the earth. Somehow, she was still alive.
The police arrived quickly and the child was rushed to Hamidia Hospital. With no witnesses and no clear clues, the police knew their best hope was if the girl survived and could speak.
Two days later, the girl who identified herself as Priti opened her eyes and told the police something they didn’t expect — the man who attacked her was her own father, Tej Singh.
She said he had taken her out saying they were going for a walk, but instead led her to the bushes and cut her throat with a big knife. While attacking her, he kept abusing her mother, who had been missing for the past two years. However, miraculously Priti survived the brutal murder attempt by her own father.
While investigating the attempt to murder case, cops recalled the recovery of a woman’s body exactly at the same spot and soon connected the two cases. Exactly two years earlier, on January 29, 2022 in those bushes, police had found the body of an unknown woman.
Her face was so badly smashed that she could not be identified. Without identification, the murder case had gone cold and remained unsolved. Tej Singh Lodhi (40), a resident of Tila Jamalpura area had married another woman Neha after the mysterious disappearance of Priti’s mother.
Police took Tej Singh with them for questioning. At first, he denied everything. But CCTV footage showed him taking his daughter from home before the attack. Neighbours confirmed that Tej’s wife had vanished in early 2022.
Under pressure and repeated questioning by cops, Tej’s story began to fall apart and finally he broke down. Two years ago, suspecting that his wife was having an affair, he took her to the bushes and killed her. He left her body there, thinking no one would connect it to him. For two years, he got away with it.
But his hatred didn’t end with his wife. He began to resent his daughter, who reminded him of her. He decided to kill her the same way and in the same place. However, his plan failed this time.
The child survived and told the truth. In saving her, police also uncovered the truth about her mother’s death and closed a blind murder case that had haunted them for two years.
A random rescue in the dark had exposed a killer hiding in plain sight — and brought justice for a woman murdered two years back.
