DU student Arzoo was not pregnant, killed in a fit of rage: Police

Investigators said while it is clear that the murder was not pre-planned, they are now on the lookout for the accused’ father to shed more light on the case.

The initial autopsy report of the 23-year-old DU student, Arzoo Singh Chauhan, who was allegedly strangled by her boyfriend on February 2 has ascertained that she was not pregnant at the time she was killed. The initial findings of the postmortem examination suggest that she died of asphyxia almost four days before her body was found.

Arzoo’s family mourning her killing by neighbour at their house in Gur Mandi in New Delhi. (Sushil Kumar/HT Photo)

Investigators said while it is clear that the murder was not pre-planned, they are now on the lookout for the accused’ father to shed more light on the case.

During questioning the accused Naveen Khatri told the police that ‘he never intended to murder Arzoo Singh, and confessed that it all happened in a fit of rage’. He told the police that Arzoo kept threatening to blow the lid and tell his family members about their secret meetings. He said she threatened to come to the wedding venue on the day of his marriage and create a scene. “He said Arzoo got very hostile and started to slap and punch him while he was driving the car and as a reaction he punched her face and then strangled her using her dupatta,” police said.

It is believed that Khatri then informed his father Raj Kumar, who is allegedly involved in a case of murder reported in 2006 and recently came out on parole, about the murder and he suggested him to drive the body home. Raj Kumar has been missing since the incident. “We are trying to trace Raj Kumar who is still missing. It is unclear if he had a role in helping Naveen dump the body in the shaft. However we suspect that he was aware of the murder. Our teams are looking for him,” police said.

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Arzoo’s semi-decomposed body was recovered from the ventilation shaft of Khatri’s four-storey home at Rajpura near Model Town on the northwestern parts of the Capital.

The 23-year-old, final-year Hindi honours student of Laxmibai College, was abducted on February 2 from outside the institution allegedly by her boyfriend from the same neighbourhood and strangled her with a dupatta inside the car. He was arrested on Saturday.

Police had on Sunday claimed that while was murdered at southwest Delhi’s Nangal Dewat, the accused concealed the body in the boot of his car, where it remained till the next morning. In the meantime, he had driven the body to his Rajpura house and around 5am he took it out from the car’s boot, heaved it to the first floor and thrust it inside a ventilation shaft when members of his family were fast asleep. The dupatta was still tied around her neck,” an officer said.

Two days later, suspected assailant Naveen Khatri married another girl and spent his wedding night at the same room in which the body was dumped.

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