BHOPAL: Piyush Dhamnodiya, the 22-year-old MBA student from Madhya Pradesh’s Mandsaur district, who was on the run after murdering his 24-year-old batchmate and girlfriend at his rented room in Indore, has been arrested in Mumbai.
Currently being questioned by the Indore police on remand, the arrested youth, who is the son of a businessman in Mandsaur, has confessed to strangling the woman to death on February 10.
“The youth, who was our prime murder suspect, has been arrested with the help of Mumbai police,” deputy commissioner of police (DCP-Indore) Krishan Lalchandani said on Monday.
Circumstantial evidence collected from the spot and the ongoing grilling of the murder accused suggest that after killing his girlfriend, he had ganja and liquor and remained seated near her nude body. He is being grilled to figure out the possibility of him having attempted sex with the body, while being in an intoxicated state.
Dhamnodiya has revealed that he was in a relationship with the girl for around a year and wanted to marry her. The girl was also pressuring him for the marriage, but owing to opposition from their families, they couldn’t go ahead.
Police said he saw her chats with multiple men in a chat application on her phone, which enraged him, prompting the murder. He had also reportedly uploaded her objectionable videos and pictures on multiple social media groups, including a group of college friends.
After committing the murder, the MBA student fled to Mumbai, where he first stayed somewhere in Panvel and started searching for jobs. It was while he was travelling in a local train in the Maharashtra capital that he came to know about the Indore Police having recovered the woman's body from his rented room, following which he immediately destroyed her phone which he was carrying.
“His questioning and evidence recovered from Panvel also suggests that he became mentally unstable after the killing and while in Mumbai, he even tried tantric rituals to summon spirits who could help him talk to the soul of the girl he had murdered,” the DCP informed.
The woman, a resident of Indore’s Pandarinath area, had gone missing on February 10 when she left home, telling her parents that she was going to a friend’s birthday party, and never returned.
Three days later, her nude body was found in Dhamnodiya’s rented room in Uncle Gali locality of Indore’s Dwarkapuri area. The body was discovered following an intolerable stench emanating from the room, which prompted residents in the neighbourhood to report it to the police.