New Delhi: Swiss woman Nina Berger, whose decomposed body was discovered in Delhi earlier this month, was allegedly smothered to death using a plastic bag, ThePrint has learnt.
“The cause of death in her preliminary autopsy report has been stated as asphyxia by smothering,” a source in the Delhi Police said.
The source added: “She was smothered using a plastic bag. Her limbs were bound with lock and chain and this is why she couldn’t get out”.
The body of the 36-year-old had been found in a plastic bag dumped outside a school in West Delhi’s Tilak Nagar. Delhi Police have arrested a gemstone dealer, Gurpreet Singh, from Janakpuri in West Delhi, and claimed he has confessed to the murder.
“The accused made sure that she couldn’t get out of the bag. He revealed during interrogation that he had bound her so that she couldn’t fight him. She struggled for some 30 minutes,” the source claimed.
According to police sources, Singh had initially stated during his interrogation that he had killed Berger — a lawyer whom he had first met in Zurich in 2021 — as she had refused to marry him, but kept changing statements during further questioning.
A senior police officer had earlier told ThePrint that Singh had invited the woman to India with a promise of a “big surprise” and had been in touch with her through a social media chat room platform.
Berger reportedly arrived in Delhi on 11 October and stayed at a hotel in Janakpuri.
Police sources have now told ThePrint that the motive behind the killing appeared to be Singh suspecting Berger of having an affair with someone else.
The police have also recovered Berger’s chats with Singh which he had deleted from his phone, the sources said.
‘Already planned her murder’
According to sources privy to the investigation, on 8 October, three days before Berger arrived in Delhi, Singh had purchased a secondhand car and attempted to get it registered in a friend’s name, but failed.
He had ended up buying it in his name and then allegedly killed Berger in the same car and kept her body in it for a day. The sources claimed that the next day, he noticed that the body had started to decompose, and allegedly dumped it outside a school.
The sources further said that Singh had also bought chains and locks, which suggested that he had already planned the murder and that it wasn’t done in the heat of the moment.
After Berger arrived, she met Singh on 18 October — the day of the murder. According to the sources, Singh had convinced Berger that he would show her an “astrological trick” and thus bound her with chains and locks.
Sources added that the fabric of the car seat was found to be torn, which suggests that Berger struggled while the accused allegedly smothered her.
“He had asked her to come to India and had already planned to kill her,” said the police source quoted above.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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