Her husband, local businessman Surender Saini, is already behind bars on charges of murder. Police sources said he had beat his wife and had also tried to throttle her at their Malviya Nagar residence on March 7. Ritu was being treated at AIIMS, but she succumbed to her injuries earlier on Friday.

As relatives waited outside the mortuary, some recounted why Ritu’s trials began at her in-laws’ place three years ago — soon after she bore a daughter as her third child. She already had an elder daughter and a son.

Her aunt Bimla Saini, who had taken care of Ritu since she was very young, said the two married in 1998. “They were very happy for seven years, by which time Ritu had had her first two children. But things started going wrong after the third child was born,” Bimla said.

Ritu had often told Bimla that Surender would get irritated at the sight of their second daughter, and was growing increasingly abusive towards his wife. Last October, he sent her home saying he “did not want her anymore”. In the next two months, he did not call her either.

But he surfaced in January and demanded his family back, saying he repented his earlier behaviour, Bimla said. Ritu’s father Fateh Singh Saini said, “We began to worry when Ritu stopped calling us. We called her neighbours who told us my daughter was still being abused by the family.”

On March 7, Surender called his father-in-law at 5 am to tell him that Ritu had slipped from the bed and was admitted in AIIMS. Ritu had already gone into coma.

Police sources said they were intimated by AIIMS soon after Ritu was hospitalised last Friday. The police found strangulation marks on her neck and injuries on her face. The medical report also spoke of “external bleeding from the right ear”. This evidence was enough to register an “attempt to murder” case against Surender. In his defence, Surender had first tried to fib saying Ritu had fallen from the bed and that the marks on her neck was because one of the children had pulled at her neckpiece. But he broke down when interrogated further and admitted he had slapped her that night.

A senior officer at the Malviya Nagar police station said Surender will now be tried for murder. He said, “Ritu’s relatives have alleged she was regularly beaten by the in-laws.”