Bhubaneswar: One person has been arrested for the alleged murder of a young woman from Odisha, who was interning with Mahindra & Mahindra’s factory in Uttarakhand’s Lalpur area.
The deceased has been identified as 23-year-old Shrusti Sharma, a native of JKPur in Odisha’s Rayagada district.
According to sources, Shrusti was staying in a rented accommodation owned by Kameshwara Singh, located near Bharatiya School for the last six months. She returned to her room on Tuesday afternoon after completing her internship. She had received her certificate and was to board a train from Delhi to Indore on Wednesday.
Calls to her phone, however, went unanswered thereafter, raising concerns among her family members.
Shrusti’s cousin, Amrut Sharma, along with two friends, travelled to Lalpur on Wednesday evening and found her missing. While the house owner claimed that he was away in Rudrapur for his wife’s medical treatment, his son, Amit Singh, failed to provide a satisfactory explanation regarding her whereabouts.
When they checked the CCTV footage in the neighbourhood, they saw Amit, along with another youth, carrying a heavy object wrapped in a bedsheet on a motorcycle around midnight on Tuesday. Following which, Amrut lodged a complaint with Lalpur Police against Amit Singh and Sumit Singh.
SP City Uttam Singh Negi confirmed the arrest of Amit Singh, who he said confessed to killing Shrusti during interrogation. He allegedly strangled Srushti to death and then dumped the body in a nearby river by tying stones to it, in an attempt to conceal the crime.
The body has been recovered from the Badour river and sent for postmortem.
A case of murder has been registered, and further investigation is underway to determine the motive and identify any additional accomplices, police added.
