Most wanted TV host Ilyasi gets life term for killing wife

New Delhi: Suhaib Ilyasi, who once hosted the popular television crime series 'India's Most Wanted', has been sentenced to life in jail for the murder of his wife 17 years ago. The 51-year-old was held guilty of murder by a Delhi court on Saturday.

Anju Ilyasi, 30, was found in her east Delhi home on January 11, 2000, with multiple stab wounds. Suhaib Ilyasi had told the police that she had committed suicide. Three months later, he was arrested on charges of dowry harassment. Anju's mother and sister told a sub-divisional magistrate that she had been driven to suicide by Suhaib Ilyasi. An autopsy report hadn't established then if Anju had stabbed herself or was murdered.

Years later, Anju's mother demanded that Suhaib Ilyasi be tried for murder. The trial court rejected this demand but the Delhi High Court ordered the east Delhi court in 2014 to try him for murder as well. Ilyasi's career as a producer and host of India's Most Wanted was at its peak in 2000 when Anju died.

The crime busting television show was India's first on criminals on the run. After his arrest and subsequent release, Ilyasi launched another show but it didn't work. He later launched a magazine, Bureaucracy Today, on civil servants and governance issues that was published from a mosque on Delhi's upscale Kasturba Gandhi Marg where his father was the top cleric.