(From left) Mandip, Ankit and Nakul after their arrest on Thursday. Picture by Rajesh Kumar

New Delhi, June 24: One of the two cousins behind Delhi’s triple honour killings has claimed he murdered his sister over fears she would fall into a flesh-trade trap, police said today after arresting him and two others.

Cousins Mandip and Ankit Gurjar — accused of killing sisters Shobha and Monica and Monica’s husband Kuldeep — were held after a four-day hunt along with friend Nakul Khari, an accomplice in the killings.

The trio were picked up from Garmukteshwar in Uttar Pradesh’s Ghaziabad, neighbouring Delhi.

In Delhi’s Ashok Vihar, where the Gurjars live, the police took into custody Mandip’s uncle Dharamvir Nagar and cousin Nitin for saying yesterday that they were proud of what the youths had done. Families have backed honour killings, many ordered by khap panchayats, earlier but the arrest of those who back such murders is rare.

The flesh trade fears stemmed from the keenness of Shobha and her younger sister Khushboo — who has married a Kashmiri youth and is now on the run after the triple-murder — to pursue modelling. Shobha had eloped with her dance teacher beau, Raja. The youth from Bihar is missing.

Monica and her husband were killed despite having married four years back because the Gurjars felt she was a “trend-setter”, having encouraged her cousins to marrymen outside their caste and at the cost of family honour, the police said.

“What triggered the murders was the fact that Shobha told her brother Mandip that Khushboo was in Mumbai modelling. She (Shobha) said she, too, intended to go there and begin modelling. They (Ankit and Mandip) said they were teased in the community for being the brothers of women who had run away,” said Ghaziabad SSP Raghubeer Lal.

Khusboo had run away and married the Kashmiri youth, Ravi, at Delhi’s Arya Samaj Mandir on May 25. Her family had filed an FIR against Ravi two days later after finding that his driving licence, a copy of which he had given at the temple as address proof for the marriage, was fake.

While the police said the trio had confessed to their crime, Ankit claimed he was innocent and was being framed in the murder of Monica and Kuldeep.

“We took our friend’s car and went for a ride. After that, we heard that our sisters and my brother-in-law had been shot by us. What could we do? We were scared, so we didn’t come back to Delhi. Delhi police’s statement that we are murderers doesn’t make us killers. Who cares what the Delhi police says. If they say that you are a murderer can there be a trial based on that?” asked Ankit as he was led out of the Ghaziabad court with Mandip and Nakul.

Ankit claimed he was never angry with Monica. “Why should I be angry, why should I express regret when I haven’t killed them,” said the Class XII dropout.

Wife kidnapped

A man from Ghaziabad, bordering Delhi, today filed a complaint saying his wife had been kidnapped by her family members and that he feared she could be killed as she had married against their wishes, according to PTI.

Ajit Singh had married Krishna of Noida on June 19. Three days later, the girl’s brothers and other relatives forcibly dragged her away from her husband’s house, Ajit said in the complaint to Ghaziabad police.