Khan, who has confessed to the crime, has been arrested. His brother Imtiaz and brother-in-law Kadir too have been detained in Chennai and are being flown in to Mumbai for interrogation.

It was Khan who in an elaborate plan to mislead the police had informed them of the murder late on Sunday evening. It now turns out that he had also instructed Imtiaz and Kadir to remove the jewellery that Niloufer was wearing to make it look like the handiwork of robbers.

He did all this so that he could live with another woman, Renuka Reddy, whom he had secretly married in Chennai in 1994 and who had since been staying with his parents there. He has a three-year-old daughter from his second marriage. It, however, did not take long for Niloufer to discover that Khan was cheating him as he keptshuttling between Chennai and Mumbai.

Senior Inspector Rafiq Sheikh of Nagpada police station said the relations between Khan and Niloufer were strained further when the former brought Renuka to Mumbai recently and found her a accommodation at Tardeo. Niloufer now began to demand that Khan divorce Renuka and this often led to ugly arguments in the house. Fed up of the daily quarrels, Khan hatched a plot to kill Niloufer with his brother Imtiaz and brother-in-law Kadir, both residents of Chennai. On Sunday Niloufer returned home after a walk around 7 pm to find Imtiaz and Kadir waiting for her.

The duo told her that they had come from Chennai to discuss Khan's second marriage and that they wanted to settle the matter once and for all. They then accompanied Niloufer to her fourth-floor apartment. Investigators say the two spent around 30 to 45 minutes in the flat during which they killed Niloufer after tying her hands and feet. While leaving they removed all the jewellery that Niloufer was wearing asthey were instructed to do by Khan.

Khan, meanwhile, spent the day visiting his friends whom he intended to use as witnesses later. He called on one Narendra Khanna and later in the day visited Manoj Harishchandra Naik. He made a mistake here. Both Khanna and Naik told police that they were surprised when Khan came calling as neither did he state any particular purpose for his visit, nor had he given them a surprise visit before.

Khanna said he also found it strange when he tried repeatedly to make a call to his house. When nobody picked up, he asked him to try. He did this in Naik's house also. Senior Inspector Sheikh said Khan broke down when he was grilled over his visits to his friends. The police are now awaiting the arrival of the other two accused after which they'll be able to piece together the events that led to Niloufer's murder.