New York, Feb 13 (IANS) Nearly a month after the charred body of an Indian American woman was found near a highway in Virginia, the police have arrested her estranged husband on charges of killing her.
The police say Harish Patel, 60, of Cary, North Carolina, killed his wife, Vanlata Patel, 57, and then burnt her body.
When produced in a court Tuesday after his arrest Monday, Patel said he was broke and could not afford an attorney. The judge appointed a public defender to represent him. He was sent back to jail without bond.
The Patels, who both have grown-up children from previous marriages, had married in 1996 but had filed for divorce last November. Court records revealed the two were engaged in a legal battle over division of $400,000 they had in Swiss bank accounts.
Vanlata had gone missing from Cary Jan 16, hours before she was to catch a flight to Toronto to join her son, Ashesh Patel, 28, in Alberta, Canada. Ashesh had called the Cary police Jan 18 to report his mother missing.
Vanlata’s body remains, wrapped in a comforter, were found at the site of a brush fire near an interstate highway on the border of Virginia and North Carolina. It was only six days later that the victim’s identity was established with the help of DNA evidence.
At the time police did not name Harish Patel a suspect, saying he was “distraught” after hearing about his wife’s death. He himself had gone on record claiming that he had nothing to hide and that he had no knowledge that his estranged wife was visiting friends in North Carolina.