Exactly a week after Infosys employee 24-year-old Swathi was hacked to death at the Nungambakkam railway station, the Chennai police claim to have made a breakthrough in the case.
The police have arrested a man named Ramkumar, who according to them had killed Swathi on June 24. The 22-year-old engineer was arrested from Senkottai in Tirunelveli. According to the police, Ramkumar tried to commit suicide when they tried to nab him.
“As we reached to nab him, he slit his throat with a sharp object and tried to commit suicide. We cannot confirm the exact reason for the murder, but he was living in Choolaimedu for the last three months,” Shankar, the investigating officer told The News Minute. The man was living near Swathi's house in Choolaimedu area in Chennai, according to the police.
Ramkumar was rushed to the government hospital in Tenkasi for first aid and later admitted to the Tirunelveli government hospital for treatment.
The 22-year-old hailing from Meenakshipuram village in Tirunelveli was an engineering graduate from a college in the same district. Reports also say that it was unclear if Swathi knew him, but the young man could have been infatuated with her. He had come to Chennai in search of a job and had been living in a paying guest accomodation.
Sources in the police department say they were able to nab him based on the murder weapon he used. According to some reports, the police seem to have suspected Ramkumar after the owner of the place in which he had lived in informed the police that that Ramkumar resembled the man in the CCTV footage. Police claim preliminary investigation showed that Ramkumar's mobile phone and that of Swathi's showed signal from the same location for sometime. Swathi's phone had been missing from June 24.
Police teams searched his room in Chennai and seized some evidence.
(The house where Ram Kumar was living)
The owner of the mansion or paying guest accomodation told the police that Ramkumar had been missing for a week.
The Chennai Police is expected to hold a press conference on Saturday and explain how and why they zeroed in on the man.
Swathi was murdered at Platform No.2 of the Nungambakkam railway station on June 24 morning, and the investigation was first handled by the Government Railway Police. The Chennai City Police which took over the investigation two days after the murder had formed a special team headed by a Additional Commissioner to probe the case. Swathi's family had informed the police that she had complained of being stalked on May 10.
Some of her friends too had informed the police that she had been stalked by someone.