After knowing main accused was in Bangalore at the time of murder, cops suspect his friend’s brother in Pune — who was also in love with Antara Das — may have killed her
Pune techie Antara Das was murdered on December 23 outside her office in Pune. (Right) The main accused Santosh Kumar
Antara Das was murdered on December 23 outside her office in Pune. (Right) The main accused Santosh Kumar
Pune: Catching the accused behind the outrageous murder of Pune techie Antara Das remains a puzzle, even after the police arrested main accused Santosh Kumar Akhileshprasad Gupta from Bangalore on Wednesday. However, Santosh was at work in Bangalore when the incident occurred last Friday. Cops are now suspecting the involvement of a third person in the murder, who is the brother of Santosh’s colleague and lives in Pune, but is currently absconding.
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Santosh hails from Ara village in Bihar and currently works in a Bangalore-based software company. He met Antara in Bangalore while they were doing a course on Javascript. Antara was stabbed to death on December 23 outside her office by an attacker identified only by his black and blue striped t-shirt.
Accused was engaged
Eyewitness Satyendra Sinha filed a case on the same day. The next day, Antara’s parents and twin sister Sanchari came to Pune from Kolkata to perform her last rites and named Santosh as a suspect in their police statements. Sanchari told cops her sister had asked Santosh to stop troubling her after he followed her to Pune and proposed to her.
Also read - Pune: 23-year-old techie brutally stabbed to death
Additional superintendent of police (Pune rural), Rajkumar Shinde said, “Santosh and the deceased had known each other for 12 months. In August, Santosh got engaged and was to get married a month later. But, 15 days before his wedding, he broke off his engagement. He was in love with her; he’d also come to Pune with her in April when she came for a job interview.”
Other lover ‘on the run’
He added, “At the time, he was staying at the home of his colleague’s brother, Anshu Gupta who is also a techie. Later, Santosh used to ask Anshu who Antara was going around with, what she was wearing, etc. It seems that Anshu too began to like Antara as he started sending SMSes to her, which she objected to. Later, she had blocked both the boys. Anshu had also procured details about Antara dating another school friend. She’d warned both of them that she didn’t need their help in Pune as she had four male colleagues to help her.”
“Anshu is on the run and we suspect that Santosh might have brainwashed him [into committing the murder] by saying that Antara is not with anyone of us, so let her be killed. So Santosh might have used him. But we have also found a few transcripts from when she was in Bangalore and went to a pub with a boy named Sameer, who tried to take advantage of her when she was drunk. We are probing the case and our parallel investigations are being carried out as well.”
Not spilling the beans
Assistant police inspector Satish Hadghar who is investigating the case said, “Accordingly, on this information, our team rushed to Bangalore and questioned him. He claimed he got to know about her [murder] after we rushed there.
We inspected his workplace and it appeared that on the day of incident, he had punched into the office and was also seen on the CCTV. Later, we brought him to Pune and initially, he was so cool that he assured to help us zero down on the culprit. We took him to the spot and continued to grill him, but he still hasn’t spilled the beans.”
On Thursday, Santosh was produced before the court of judicial magistrate (first class) and has been remanded to police custody till January 4. After his arrest, the police have added Section 120 B (criminal conspiracy) and 34 (common intention) of the Indian Penal Code in the existing case.
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