Top MP linked to headline-grabbing murder case

In a sensational twist to a murder case gripping India, the wife of a policeman who is the prime suspect in the murder of a journalist three years ago has implicated a top politician in the case.

Shivani Bhatnagar was working for the Indian Express newspaper when she was murdered at her home. She was strangled with a wire and stabbed in the neck and abdomen with a knife taken from the kitchen. Her three-month-old son, who was in the house at the time, was unharmed.

Delhi police say Bhatnagar was having an affair with a senior police officer, Ravi Kant Sharma, and was desperate for him to divorce his wife and marry her.

They said that when Sharma refused, she threatened to charge him with rape if he failed to leave his wife.

Police say Sharma, frightened that Bhatnagar would wreck his marriage and career by revealing their relationship, hired killers to get rid of her. Sharma disappeared three weeks ago when he heard another suspect in the case had been arrested. He has been on the run since.

Last week his wife, Madhu, held a press conference dismissing as 'nonsense' reports that she had tried to commit suicide over her husband's infidelities.

'My family life is in a shambles because of these stories,' she said, choking with emotion. Mrs Sharma insisted her husband was being framed at the behest of the Home Ministry to protect a well-known politician.