3 min readBhopalApr 10, 2026 08:09 PM IST
Before she went to bed on the night of April 7, Priyanka Purohit allegedly left the front door of her house in Gondikhedha Charan village in Madhya Pradesh’s Dhar district unlocked. Two men allegedly came in, found her husband Devkrishna, a 28-year-old chilli trader, asleep, and killed him with a bladed weapon. When they left, Priyanka allegedly sat in the dark for fifteen minutes. Then she screamed.
Priyanka allegedly told police robbers had tied her up, looted gold and silver worth Rs 3 lakh and Rs 50,000 in cash, and killed Devkrishna when he resisted. But then came the twist: the jewellery was allegedly found inside the house, her phone records told a different story, and details of the incident changed with each retelling. Within 48 hours, she confessed, police said.
On Thursday, 25-year-old Priyanka Purohit was arrested along with her friend, 31-year-old Kamlesh Purohit. The arrest came after Purohit’s story of an armed robbery allegedly fell apart.
The marriage had been arranged when both were 15 — a ‘baal vivah’ neither had chosen. The two remained with their parents until they became adults, with Priyanka only moving into Devkrishna’s home in 2021. There were problems from the start, with Priyanka allegedly making her resentment known.
According to Devkrishna’s sister Jyoti, she would make colourist remarks about his skin. “She would tell him ‘Tum kaale ho [You’re dark] you don’t deserve me’. She picked fights, disappeared to her parents’ home for days, returned only to fight again, and threatened to file false cases against the family,” Jyoti claimed.
Meanwhile, since 2017, Jyoti had allegedly been in a relationship with Kamlesh Purohit, who ran a dhaba in Rajgarh, police said. Kamlesh was married and had two children.
Priyanka allegedly told police robbers had tied her up, looted gold and silver worth Rs 3 lakh and Rs 50,000 in cash, and killed Devkrishna when he resisted.
On March 31, Priyanka returned from her parents’ home. That same day, she and Kamlesh allegedly settled on a price: Rs 1 lakh to have her husband killed. They allegedly hired an assassin, Surendra Bhati, from Chhadvad. Surendra was a known history cheater, having already served four years for a 2020 Mumbai shooting and being wanted for a 2025 robbery in Kukshi. “Rs 50,000 was paid upfront for the killing,” police said.
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After Priyanka’s robbery claim, a fingerprint team, dog squad, and cyber unit began investigating but allegedly found nothing supporting it. The jewellery was allegedly found inside the house, and mobile records showed Kamlesh was in touch with Priyanka before, during, and after the murder.
“We investigated from the robbery angle, and eventually the suspicion fell on the wife. Under sustained interrogation, she confessed that she left the door open, that Kamlesh stood outside, that she waited for the signal before raising the alarm. The plan was to make it look like a robbery and mislead us completely,” SP Mayank Awasthi told The Indian Express.
