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Burning Her Lover to Replace Her Husband · Crime Night

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: I want you to close your eyes for a second
• 0:01
  Speaker 1: and just to put yourself in a specific place. Okay,
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: It's November twenty eight, twenty seventeen. You are standing in
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: the hallway of a private hospital in telling Gana, South India, and.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: The air conditioning is humming, but you know it's not
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: clearing the air.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: All the air is thick. It's got that sharp, you know,
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: antiseptic smell.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: Is there something else underneath it, something acrid, almost.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Metallic, the smell of burnt flesh. Yeah.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: And the sound is just it's pure chaos. You have
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: nurses running their shoes, squeaking on the linoleum.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: And outside an operating theater there's a family, a wealthy family,
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: huddled together, praying, sobbing.
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: Just holding on for dear life. The panic is.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: Absolutely inside that theater is doctor Sudicar Swadcar. He's thirty
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: two years old, a successful physiotherapist, and he is fighting
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: for every.
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: Breath because he's been the victim of a brutal acid attack.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: His face has been well, it's been chemically obliterated.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: It's standing right there in the middle of all this
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: is his wife, Swati. She's a nurse at this very hospital.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: She is hysterical, her white.
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: Uniform is stained, and she's telling everyone this story about
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: how she found him on a dark road, just groaning
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: in agony, his face melting.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: It is a scene of utter devastation, a beloved doctor
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: senselessly attacked.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: But here's where it gets strange. I need you to
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: brace yourself for this. Fast forward just one week. The
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: police are back at that hospital room, and.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: The vibe is completely different. This time. They are not
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: there to take a statement.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: Now they're guarding the door.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: Because they are there to arrest the victim. Right the
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: man in that bed, covered in bandages, fighting for his life. Wow,
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: he is not the victim of a random attack.
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: And this is the part that will make your blood
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: run cold.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: He isn't even doctor Sawadkar.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: This is a case that it genuinely blurs the line
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: between reality and the most twisted thriller you can imagine.
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: We aren't just looking at a murder today.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: We are looking at an identity theft so committed, so
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: visceral that it just defies belief. Infidelity, a cold blooded execution,
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: and a plastic surgery scheme gone horribly tragically wrong.
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: Today, on this deep dive, we are unpacking the case
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: of the Telangana impostor, and I have to.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: Ask, where do you even begin with the deception this deep?
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: We have to go back to understand the how. We
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: first have to understand the who. So let's rewind to
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: twenty fourteen.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: Okay, so paint the picture for us, Oh, who was
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: the real victim here? Who was Sudokar Salwatker.
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: By all accounts, he was the golden child. He came
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: from a wealthy merchant family, very comfortable.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: But he wasn't just some rich kid, not at all.
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: He was a grinder, a physiotherapist who worked tirelessly. He'd
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: do a full shift at the government hospital and then
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: instead of going home, he'd go run his own private
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: clinic in the evenings.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: So completely laser focused on.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: His career, exactly serious, maybe a little introverted, but deeply ambitious.
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: His family, of course, was thrilled with him.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: And then Swati enters the picture. She's a nurse at
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: the same government hospital, and.
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: She was impressive. She wasn't just a background care The
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: reports describe her as sharp, a quick learner, highly competent,
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: the kind of.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: Person who's always one step.
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: Ahead, right Swatker notices this. He sees this intelligent, capable
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: woman in his field, and he thinks this is a match.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: It makes sense on paper, doesn't it. The doctor and.
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: The nurse a power couple in the making. He proposes
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: his family is over the moon, and they get married
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: in twenty fourteen, and for.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: A while it seemed to work.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: It did. Swati was actually inspired by his work ethic.
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: She starts taking courses trying to upskill. She gets caught
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: up in his ambition.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: But then life gets complicated. A year later, twenty fifteen,
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: they have a son, and that's where the drift begins.
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: It's a classic sad dynamic. After the baby, Swatty's world
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: shrinks down to the child in the home, but Sawatkers doesn't.
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: His world doesn't change at all. He's still at the hospital,
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: then the clinic. He's effectively absent emotionally and physically.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: He's described as distant, not abusive or anything, just checked out.
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: He comes home exhausted and just wants to be left alone. Meanwhile,
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: Swati feels like she's carrying the entire emotional weight of
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: the family. She's lonely, and that.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: Kind of loneliness in a marriage is a dangerous thing, of.
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: Course, they argue, but to the outside world they keep
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: up appearances beautifully, image of perfection, which.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: Brings us to twenty sixteen. So Wadgir's private clinic is
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: doing so well that he decides to leave the government
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: hospital right.
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: A smart career move, but it means he is now
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: physically separated from Swati all day because she keeps her
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: job at the hospital, and.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: That separation creates a vacuum. With the husband gone all
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: day and mentally checked out when he's home.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: The stage is set for a third person to enter
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: or uh re entering. Rajesh, a male nurse at the hospital,
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: but he isn't a stranger that this is the first
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: major twist. Rajesh and Swati were lovers before she married
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: the doctor ah the classic one that got away, or
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: maybe the one she left behind for money. He was
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: reportedly heartbroken when she married Sawatkar. He felt she chose status.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: Over love, and he's been carrying that resentment for years exactly.
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: So, now it's twenty sixteen. Swati is walking the halls
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: of the hospital looking miserable, and Rajesh sees his opening.
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: He approaches her, and he says what exactly he tells
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: her he sees sadness in her eyes.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: Wow, it's a bit of a cliche, but I guess
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: it worked.
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: It's exactly what she needed to hear. When you feel
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: invisible to your spouse, being seen by someone else is
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: like a drug. They start talking, and.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: Since her husband is at his clinic all day and
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: studying all night, the house is empty.
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: It starts with phone calls, then meetings at the hospital,
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: and pretty soon the affair is back on full blown.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: They probably thought they were safe that Sewaker was too
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: obsessed with work to ever notice.
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: But indifference isn't blindness. Swatker is a smart man. He
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: starts to notice that Swati's not just unhappy anymore, She's
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: indifferent to him. She stops fighting for his attention.
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: That's always the biggest red flag, isn't it when they
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: stop arguing.
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: It is, so he starts investigating his own wife. He
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: spies on her at the hospital and sees the intimacy
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: with Rajesh. He asks a friend and the friend confirms it, Yeah,
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: that's her ex lover. So the confrontation yes, but Sawatker,
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: to his credit, tries to save the marriage he issues
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: an ultimatum. He tells Swatty she has to quit her job.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: He wants to cut the cord.
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: He says, I'll find you a new job somewhere else,
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: far away from Rajesh.
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: Which to a rational person sounds like a fair boundary
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: to set.
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: But to Swati it felt like a cage door slamming shut.
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: She panics. She felt controlled as she was losing her
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: only source of happiness.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: So she agrees to his face, but internally she flips.
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: She calls Jesh and that conversation spirals very very quickly
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: from what do we do to We have to get
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: rid of them.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: This is the pivot. They decide to kill him, And
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: they did have a plan A right, a sort of standard,
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: if brutal plan.
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: They did. Plan A was to kill Sawatkar, take his
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: body into the forest, burn it completely, scatter the ashes,
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: and then Swati would just claim he vanished a missing person.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: Horrific but simple. But then something happens in September twenty seventeen,
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: two months before the murder, that changes everything.
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: This is the moment that sets this case apart. She's
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: at work reading a medical report about a patient undergoing
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: facial reconstruction after a chemical burn.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: And she has a Eureka moment.
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: A dark twisted epiphany. She's looking at this report and
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: she realizes something profound. Socially, we are faces. If the
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: face is disfigured, identity becomes fluid.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: So she calls Rajesh with Plan B and just walk
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: us through this. Sheer audacity of this.
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: It's insane. Step one, kill the husband. Step two, disfigure
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: Rajesh's face.
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: With chemicals right her lover's face.
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: Her lover's face. Step three, Rajesh impersonates Salwatkar in the hospital.
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: Step four, use the family's money to pay for plastic surgery.
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: Step five, Rajesh literally takes over Swatkar's life.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: He becomes the doctor, gets the clinic, the money, the status.
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: It is the ultimate identity, theft.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: I have to stop. You think about the manipulation required here.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: Swati has to convince the man she supposedly adores to
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: let her poor acid on his face. How do you
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: even sell that pitch?
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: It's staggering. And Rajesh initially refused. I mean, obviously, who wouldn't.
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: But Swati was incredibly persuasive. She convinced him Plan A
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: was too risky. A missing person case never really closes.
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: That's true. The police keep digging, exactly.
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: But if the husband is alive and in the hospital,
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: there's no crime to investigate, the police stop looking. She
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: promised him that with plastic surgery, he'd eventually look enough
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: like Sawatkar to fool everyone.
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: It's a testament to either his obsession with her or
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: his greed.
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: It's a mix of all of it. So the data
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: set November twenty six, twenty seventeen.
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: Swatkar goes to his clinic a normal day, but by
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: eleven zero pm he stops answering.
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: His phone because he was already dead. Swati and Rajesh
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: had executed part one of the plan. They took his
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: body to the forest, burned it and buried the ashes.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: So now the impersonation was supposed to happen immediately, but
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: Rajesh he got cold feet.
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: And can you blame him? He's standing there, the adrenaline
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: from the murder is wearing off, and now he has
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: to volunteer to be mutilated the reality of the pain
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: set in.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: It took Swatty two full days to convince him again.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: Imagine the tension in that house.
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: Finally, on November twenty eighth, he breaks. He agrees.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: This is the moment. She prepares the chemical agent. She
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: stands over her lover and she pours it on his.
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: Face, erases red jsh so he can be overwritten. As
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: sawat Car. The pain must have been unimaginable.
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: But once the deed is done, the performance begins. She
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: rushes him to her own workplace the hospital, screaming, we
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: were attacked. Someone threw acid.
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: And at first it worked perfectly. He's bandaged, in critical condition.
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: He can't speak clearly. The family arrives.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: And Swatkur's father. He just sees his son in pain.
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: He's relieved his son is alive. That's all that matters.
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: He tells Swatty not to worry about money. He'll pay
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: for everything.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: So he's paying to treat his own son's killer. The
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: irony is just heartbreaking.
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: It is, and Swatty's playing the devoted wife, but her
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: behavior is defensive. She's guarding the bedside, keeping the family away,
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: insisting he needs absolute rest.
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: She's managing the flow of information because she knows that visually,
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: under the bandages he passes. But she underestimated the father.
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: This is the variable she didn't account for. You can
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: burn a face, you can fake a chart, but you
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: cannot mimic the soul of a person. Three days pass
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: and the father starts noticing things.
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: What kind of things? I mean under bandages. Everyone looks
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: the same.
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: It was subconscious. The body language, the way the man
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: in the dead moved his hands, it just didn't feel
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: like his son. And the communication the son was avoiding it.
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: It felt deliberate. The father felt that the silence was
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: a wall, not a symptom of his injury.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: If that parental instinct, you just know, you know your
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: child's presence precisely.
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: And Swattie's frantic behavior was the other red flag. She
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: was actively pushing family away, which is the opposite of
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: what a grieving wife would do.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: So a week later, the father does something incredibly brave.
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: He calls the police.
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: He says, I don't think the man in that bed
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: is my son. Imagine the courage that took to risk
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: looking crazy.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: The police arrived, they confront swati. Her composure starts to crack,
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: but they need proof. They can't just arrest a burned
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: victim based on a father's bad.
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: Vibe, so they go to the ultimate identifier fingerprints.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: In Doctor Swadcar, as a licensed medical professional, would have
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: his prints on file.
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: That was the checkmate. They took the prints from the
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: man in the bed. They ran them against the database
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: and no match for Swadcar, a perfect match for Rajsh
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: the male nurse.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: The house of Cars just disintegrates. Swati is cornered. The
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: evidence is irrefutable.
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: And she confesses. She lays it all out, the murder
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: on the twenty six, burning the body, the acid attack
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: on the twenty eighth. She explains the entire insane logic
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: behind it.
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: It's pure delusion, the arrogance of believing you can outsmart
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: the entire world just because you know how a hospital works.
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: It's specific kind of narcissism. She treated everyone around her
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: like characters in a game she could reprogram, and what
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: I to them justice was swift. Swatty was arrested immediately.
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: Rajesh was arrested while still in his hospital bed, recovering
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: from the burns he allowed to be inflicted on himself.
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: Both were sentenced to death.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: It's a total tragedy. A brilliant doctor dead, a young
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: child left without parents, and it's the father's intuition. That's
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: the real hero here. If he hadn't trusted.
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: His gut, they might have gotten away with it.
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: Do you really think so? Long term?
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: That's the scary question. If he'd gotten the surgery and
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: maybe claimed the attack caused personality changes from the trauma,
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: he might have been able to fake it for a
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: long time. People make excuses for trauma victim.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: It really makes you think about identity. We rely so
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: heavily on biometrics now, but it wasn't technology that Fort
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: spotted the fake. It was just human connection.
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. Swati understood that the face is our interface with
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: the world. She tried to hack the interface, but she
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: forgot that identity is also in the software, the memories,
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: the habits, transplant those.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: It's a chilling thought to leave on. How easy is
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: it to become someone else if you are willing to
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: destroy who you were, and if.
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: You are willing to destroy everyone around you to do it.
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: This has been a heavy one. We've unpacked the telling
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: Ghana imposter case, a grim reminder that truth is often
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: darker than fiction.
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: And that sometimes the mask we wear is literal.
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to this deep dive. Stay safe, Trust
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: your gut, and we'll catch you on the next one.