A 72-year-old woman was found murdered in her Egmore apartment on Thursday night, police said, with 4 grams of gold jewellery and a smartphone missing from the flat.

According to the Times of India, police identified the woman as Sharada and said she lived in the flat with her niece Dhanya, a postgraduate student.

Dhanya returned to her third floor flat around 9.45PM and found her aunt with her throat slit. 

She immediately called a guard at the apartment complex who alerted the police, and shortly after, the body was sent to Royapettah Government Hospital.  

Sharada, a widow, and Dhanya were from Namanamkadu in Kerala's Thrissur and had been staying in the apartment for the past three years, paying a monthly rent of Rs 20,000. Sharada was the elder sister of Dhanya's father Divakar, who works in Muscat.