CHENNAI: A 29-year-old research scholar of IIT Madras was found dead on the railway track near the Avadi Railway station.
The deceased has been identified as Megashree Padhan, a native of Odisha.
Padhan finished her Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering and joined as a post-doctoral research scholar at IIT Madras about six months ago. She was staying in the institution hostel in Adyar, said the police.
Megashree left the hostel on Wednesday to meet her friend in Avadi. However, she failed to return to the hostel. Her roommates thought she might have stayed at her friend's house. Her phone was switched off. When she failed to return to the hostel until her roommate on Friday morning lodged a complaint with the Shastri Nagar police.
Meanwhile, passersby found a dead body on the railway track between a private college and Avadi railway station on Thursday. The information was passed on to the Avadi Railway police. Following this, the body was shifted to the Kilpauk Medical College and Hospital.
The recovery of an abandoned bag with identity cards about a kilometre away from where Megashree's body was recovered helped the police to identify and subsequently inform her parents. Her parents reached Chennai on Saturday morning and returned and took their daughter's body home. After preliminary investigations, the police suspect that Megashree might have killed herself. Further investigations are on.
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