An MBA student was found dead inside her classmate's rented house in Indore, two days after he went missing. The body of the 24-year-old student was found naked and in a decomposed condition.
The recovery of the body on Friday sent shockwaves through the city as police suspect that she was strangled to death, as rope marks appeared on her neck.
Her classmate, also the alleged boyfriend, was untraceable and is a prime suspect in the case. The body was recovered after residents in Dthe warkapuri area alerted the police about a foul smell emanating from the locked house.
The cops reached the site, entered the house and found the naked body. Speaking to news agency PTI, deputy commissioner of police Shri Krishna Lalchandani said, "She appeared to have died two days ago due to strangling, but the exact cause of death will be confirmed after the post-mortem".
Video posted around murder time
The police now believe that she was likely killed around the time she was reported missing. According to a report by NDTV, a video of a sexual act was shared on her college WhatsApp group from her phone at the same time as her murder.
The video shows the victim's face, but the other person's face was covered with emojis. The investigators suspect him to be her classmate, who was also her boyfriend.
Victim's father also made disturbing allegations that the suspect was pressuring her for money, threatening her to leak her private photos in case she denied.
When did she go missing?
According to reports, the woman was a first-year MBA student at a city's private institute on Sanwer Road. On Tuesday, she went with her father to get her birth certificate corrected. In the evening, she told the family that she was going to attend a birthday party with a classmate, Piyush Dhanotia, adding that she would return by 11 pm.
However, she never returned. On the same night, the purported objectionable video was posted on the WhatsApp group. The management deleted it and informed her father the next day.
The management also told him that the phones of both Dhanotia and the victim were switched off. After going to several police stations, an FIR was finally registered at Pandharinath late Wednesday night.
A policeman reportedly went to Dhanotia's house, but it was locked. It was only after neighbours alerted them about the smell that the body was recovered. The efforts are underway to trace and nab Dhanotia.