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  Unholy nexus: Manisha Makhija (face covered) allegedly conspired with Piyush Shyamdasani (above) in killing the latter's wife, Jyoti (below)

The server at Kanpur's Verandah restaurant recalls the strange order that came from the table next to the counter. The man wanted a Kiwi-flavoured hookah, along with a can of the energy drink, Red Bull. The combination, he thought, was unusual.

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What followed was stranger still. The man — later identified as Piyush Shyamdasani — was on the phone most of the time, and twice stepped out for several minutes with his cellphone. His wife, Jyoti, sat quietly, pecking at the food on her vegetable platter.

Within hours, the restaurant had hit the headlines. Jyoti, 27, had been found dead — stabbed 14 times in the couple's car, which was parked some 10 kilometres from the restaurant on the outskirts of the city.

Shyamdasani, 29, sobbed uncontrollably in front of television cameras. He and his wife were waylaid on their way back home on July 27 from Verandah by 'eight bearded men with skull caps' on motorbikes, he said. They hijacked the car with his wife in it.

On July 30, the Kanpur police arrested Shyamdasani and five others for the murder. The scion of a biscuit billionaire, the police claim, hatched the murder with his girlfriend, Manisha Makhija, the 27-year-old daughter of a Kanpur-based gutkha baron.

Shyamdasani is the son of Om Prakash Shyamdasani, who has the franchise for Parle-G biscuits in Uttar Pradesh. Makhija is known in some circles as 'Kesarwale ki beti', Kesar being the name of her father's gutkha brand. The two, it is said, were in a relationship for long, but weren't allowed to marry because the families believed their horoscopes didn't match.

'She was determined to marry him even after his marriage and even though she knew that he was seeing other women,' one of Makhija's close friends says. The police say that Shyamdasani's mobile records show that he was in close touch with several women.

The police claim that Shyamdasani had asked Awadhesh Chaturvedi, Makhija's driver, to kill his wife, promising to pay him Rs 50,000. Chaturvedi had sought the help of his friends, Ashish Kashyap, Sonu Kashyap and Renu Kanojia. All the accused are in police custody.

It was supposed to have been a perfect murder. Shyamdasani bought new SIM cards for cellphones that were known only to him and Makhija; the police say he hired people who had no criminal records; and he gave the murder a communal angle by describing the kidnappers as men with beards and caps. But when the plot started to unravel, he was caught in his own web of lies.

He was arrested after the police found many inconsistencies in his statements. The police were suspicious when he reported the so-called kidnapping an hour after it supposedly took place. The police said Shyamdasani and Makhija had also exchanged scores of text messages while he was in the restaurant.

CCTV evidence at the restaurant also showed that he had been lying. 'He claimed that he didn't step out of the restaurant for more than two minutes, but the CCTV evidence said something else,' says R.K. Chaturvedi, DIG, Kanpur Range.

A camera placed outside the third-floor restaurant also had footage of Shyamdasani's Honda Accord car and his alleged meeting with some of the accused when he stepped out of the restaurant.

The gruesome murder has left Kanpur dazed. The police say they have been flooded with phone calls and visits from people offering to provide new information on Shyamdasani and Makhija. A Facebook page 'Justice for Jyoti' has been set up with some 16,000 followers.

Shyamdasani and his wife were directors in Himangi Packaging Pvt. Ltd, one of the subsidiaries of Himangi Foods, the flagship company of the Shyamdasani family.

The murder accused always knew that he would join his father's business. 'So he never took his studies seriously,' says a former schoolmate at the Sir Padampat Singhania Education Centre in Kanpur. 'He was an average student with a weakness for girls. He also never shied away from displaying his wealth,' the classmate says.

The family got him married to Jyoti — her name was Pooja, but the Shyamdasanis changed it according to a family tradition — in 2012. 'Pooja was a great daughter who never gave us any trouble. She was good at studies and started working as a teacher in a local school after passing her BEd with 78 per cent marks,' her Jabalpur-based industrialist father Shankar Nagdev says.

He breaks down repeatedly while talking about his daughter on the phone from Madhya Pradesh. 'When she married, we thought that she would live a fairy tale life. But look what happened?'

Police also recovered three diaries kept by Jyoti. According to a police official who has seen the diaries, she suspected that her husband was not faithful when they were on their honeymoon in Switzerland. 'She writes that he was on the phone talking to somebody in India all the time,' the official says.

Jyoti had confided to an aunt that she was not happy with her marriage and that she would discuss it with her parents when she visited them during Rakhi. 'Piyush probably knew that she had grown suspicious of him and she would reveal everything to her parents,' her uncle, Rajesh Nagdev, says.

Some fear that the case may not lead to justice because the families of the accused wield considerable power. This became apparent when circle officer R.K. Naik, who was investigating the case, was caught on camera fondly kissing Shyamdasani on his forehead, and urging him to mend his ways. He was transferred soon after the incident. There are also allegations that a Western style lavatory was installed in the Kanpur District Jail at the request of Makhija days after they were taken into custody.

A raid by the local administration after complaints of preferential treatment revealed that burgers and pizzas were being delivered to Shyamdasani and Makhika in jail.

Police say they are revisiting some of their own theories for a watertight case. The police had earlier said that suspicion fell on Shyamdasani when CCTV footage showed that he had changed his T-shirt after dining out with his wife, and before lodging a complaint with the police. Now they say that the footage doesn't conclusively establish that. It was also said that Jyoti was stabbed in front of her husband — and she pleaded with him to save her. The police are looking into these charges.

'We are expecting top criminal lawyers to fight this case. We are trying to close all the loopholes. We have 6-7 teams working on this, and a separate team to analyse the evidence,' Chaturvedi says.

Meanwhile, across Kanpur, everybody is talking about the murder. But in the upmarket Pandu Nagar area, where the families of the main accused live, everything looks normal. The Shyamdasanis live in a three-storey building next to the Makhijas' two-storey house. There are no nameplates to identify the families.

'The two families are worth hundreds of crores of rupees, but they never had nameplates. Perhaps they feared that any kind of publicity could attract criminals,' local resident Animesh Pandey says.

A murder is announced

July 27: Piyush Shyamdasani tells the police that his wife, Jyoti, has been whisked away in their car by a group of men, an hour after the incident.

July 28: Police recover her body with 14 stab wounds in the car parked outside the city.

July 29: Police find inconsistencies in Piyush's statements.

July 30: Police arrest him and allege that he is the mastermind. They also arrest Awadhesh Chaturvedi and Renu Kanojia.

July 31: Manisha Makhija, the daughter of a gutkha baron, is arrested on charges of murder and criminal conspiracy. Two men — Sonu Kashyap and Ashish Kashyap — are arrested as well.

August 2: Circle officer R.K. Naik kisses Piyush's forehead in front of the media. Is transferred.

August 4: Court allows police remand of the accused.

August 5: District administration raids barracks of Piyush and Makhija. Seize pizza and burger wrappers after reports of preferential treatment by jail authorities.

August 5: Police say they have recovered the knife used in the crime.