Rajkhowa Family Murder Case

 

The **Rajkhowa Family Murder Case** is one of the most mysterious and disturbing crimes in Indian legal history. The case came to light in **1970** and involved **Upendra Nath Rajkhowa**, a respected District and Sessions Judge in Assam, who was convicted of murdering his wife and three daughters. The case stunned the nation because the accused was himself a senior judicial officer entrusted with upholding the law. Even decades later, the exact motive behind the murders remains uncertain.

Upendra Nath Rajkhowa was serving as the District and Sessions Judge at **Dhubri, Assam**, when his wife **Putuli Rajkhowa** and their three daughters—**Nirmali (Linu)**, **Jonali (Luna)**, and **Rupali (Bhantu)**—came to stay with him at the official judge's bungalow. In early 1970, court staff noticed unusual activities at the residence. Rajkhowa instructed workers to dig two large pits inside the bungalow compound, claiming they were meant for planting flowers and trees. At the time, no one suspected that these pits would later become crucial pieces of evidence in a murder investigation.

In February 1970, Rajkhowa informed relatives and colleagues that his wife and daughters had left for Delhi or Guwahati. As weeks passed, family members became increasingly suspicious because none of the women contacted their relatives. Their disappearance remained unexplained, and Rajkhowa gave conflicting accounts whenever questioned about their whereabouts. Eventually, his wife's brother began making independent inquiries, which exposed inconsistencies in Rajkhowa's story.

After retiring from service, Rajkhowa left Assam and checked into a hotel in **Siliguri, West Bengal**. Police tracked him down in July 1970. During questioning, he initially claimed that his wife had died after falling from a veranda, that his eldest daughter had died from sleeping pills, and that his two younger daughters had died by suicide after learning of the earlier deaths. Investigators found his explanations inconsistent and unsupported by evidence. Before he could be formally questioned further, Rajkhowa attempted suicide by stabbing himself inside his hotel room but survived after receiving medical treatment.

Following his recovery, investigators intensified their interrogation. The police subsequently searched the official bungalow in Dhubri, where they excavated the two pits that Rajkhowa had ordered months earlier. Human remains were recovered from both locations. According to the prosecution, the bodies of his wife and eldest daughter had been buried in one pit, while the bodies of his two younger daughters had been buried in the other. The discovery confirmed that the family had never left the residence and had instead been secretly buried within the compound.

The case proceeded to trial before the Assam courts. Prosecutors relied on circumstantial evidence, witness testimony from court employees, the recovery of the bodies, and Rajkhowa's contradictory statements. Although a co-accused, Umesh Baishya, was acquitted due to insufficient evidence, the court found Upendra Nath Rajkhowa guilty of murdering all four family members and attempting to conceal the crime by burying their bodies. He was sentenced to death, a verdict later upheld on appeal.

The Rajkhowa Family Murder Case remains one of India's most baffling criminal cases because no clear motive was ever conclusively established. Historians and legal scholars have speculated about possible financial, psychological, or personal reasons, but none were definitively proven in court. The case is remembered not only for its brutality but also because it involved a senior judge becoming the perpetrator of a horrific crime, making it one of the darkest chapters in the history of the Indian judiciary.