QUEENS, NY — A 74-year-old man faces a murder charge after allegedly killing his much younger wife, who was found dismembered and wrapped in plastic tarp, prosecutors said.
Rupchand Simboo is accused of killing his 33-year-old wife, Salisha Ali, sometime after the evening of July 13, 2025, according to an indictment leveled this week.
Authorities say the couple was together there that night, but Ali never showed up for her Brooklyn job the next morning and was never heard from again.
“My thoughts are with Salisha Ali’s family and friends as we work to ensure that the defendant is held fully accountable,” said Melinda Katz, district attorney for Queens, in a statement.
Prosecutors said that on Sept. 22, 2025—more than two months after Ali’s family reported her missing—two NYC Sanitation workers found a blue moving blanket tied with yellow rope containing a large object near a wooded area by 149th Avenue and Brookville Boulevard.
Inside the blanket, the workers found what appeared to be a decomposed female torso, which prosecutors later identified as Ali’s remains.
A search warrant at Simboo’s home turned up plastic wrap and yellow rope matching the type used to bind Ali’s torso, according to NYPD lab analysis. A second warrant at his work garage yielded an identical moving blanket.
This past month, more remains—including a head, legs and an arm—turned up in the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge off Cross Bay Boulevard, south of the North Channel Bridge.
Forensic analysis by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner confirmed the additional remains also belonged to Ali.
Detectives searched the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge woods using GPS coordinates from the Life360 app on Simboo’s phone.
The data placed Simboo at the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge on July 14, 2025, the day after Ali was last seen alive. It also showed him at the Brookville Boulevard and 149th Avenue site the next day, July 15, where sanitation workers found her torso, officials said.
“The defendant went to extraordinary lengths to evade responsibility for the brutal killing of his wife, discarding her remains in remote locations and concealing critical evidence in an apparent effort to cover up this horrific crime,” Katz said.
“Were it not for the diligence of New York City Sanitation workers, who discovered the remains and promptly notified authorities, the victim’s loved ones might still be searching for answers about her disappearance,” she added.
Simboo was arraigned last week on charges including second-degree murder and concealment of a human corpse. Queens Criminal Court Judge Sharifa Nasser-Cuellar remanded him in custody and set today’s return date of March 16.
If convicted, he faces 25 years to life in prison.