Noida A 37-year-old man, his brother and uncle were arrested on Tuesday for allegedly smothering his wife to death and then burning her body in Muradnagar in January, police said.An investigation was taken up after the woman’s family filed a missing person’s complaint on June 6, officers said. (Respresentational image)An investigation was taken up after the woman’s family filed a missing person’s complaint on June 6, officers said.The husband and his brother are residents of Muradnagar and their uncle is from Muzaffarnagar in Uttar Pradesh.The couple got married around 12 years ago and started having disputes. They lived separately for some time, and around 10 months ago, she moved along with her husband and his family in Ghaziabad, investigators said her brother told police.“My sister and her husband have two daughters –- aged 10 and six. For the last few months, when I failed to establish any contact with my sister, I approached her home in Muradnagar and found no trace of her,” the brother said in the FIR, also seen by HT.“The brother said that the woman’s husband has been misleading her family since they killed her. On calls, he kept telling the family that she was out for work or made other excuses. As they had settled after a dispute, the family initially assumed that she was happy and so they did not want to interfere. But after five months, when they could not talk to her, they reached the house in Muradnagar,” Krishna Kumar Maurya, station house officer, Muradnagar, said.When the woman’s brother asked the elder daughter about her mother’s whereabouts, she told him that she saw her father and uncle smothering the victim’s face with a pillow.“She said father and uncle hanged her mother, smothered her face using a pillow, and later packed her inside a bed and left the house,” the complainant said in the FIR.The daughter allegedly revealed that she witnessed the entire incident while peeking through a window and was later threatened by her grandmother that if she told anyone, police would arrest them and they would not allow her to live with them.On the basis of the complaint, police registered a case under sections 141(1) (kidnapping) and 351(3) (criminal intimidation) of Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) against three people and arrested them for investigation.During investigation, the accused husband told the police, “After the settlement, we started living with my family at my brother’s house in Muradnagar. Soon, my wife started fighting with the family. In January, when I was at work, she fought with my mother and assaulted her. Later, she also kept insulting me. So I decided to kill her and also involved my brother.”He told the police that on January 29, they first hung her at their house, and when they found out she was still breathing, they smothered her face. Later, with their uncle’s help, they took her body to a forest area and torched it.Surendra Nath Tiwari, deputy commissioner of police, Ghaziabad (Rural), told HT, “We have recovered the woman’s remains from the forest area and sent them for forensics analysis. Victim’s husband and two relatives were booked on charges of 103 (murder), 238 (disappearance of evidence) and 61(2) (criminal conspiracy) of BNS at Muradnagar police station. The incident was revealed after the victim’s daughter informed us.”