A driver with the Indian Institute of Management-Indore and another person were arrested on Tuesday in connection with the gruesome murder of assistant professor Amrata Pancholi at her residence in the institute campus on the outskirts of the city.
The driver brutally stabbed the 32-year-old to death after she refused to divulge the personal identification number (PIN) for the bank automatic teller machine (ATM) card he had snatched from her on the night of December 17, IGP Sanjay Rana said.
Anil Patel (30), employed with IIM-Indore since 1999, had opened latches of rear doors of Pancholi’s house in the afternoon after accessing the keys kept in her car. He took the car away on the pretext of repairing the punctured spare
tyre.
Patel entered the house through the rear door and waited for Pancholi to return from work before attacking her around midnight.
Patel left the campus around 7.30 am on December 18, when people started moving across the main security gate, Rana said. As Patel was a regular institute employee, his movement was not recorded and did not raise any suspicion.
Patel, who stole two mobile phones, gold ornaments, wristwatch, ATM card and Rs 2,000 in cash, had tried to dispose of the articles with the help of Bhavesh Soni (19), a first year BSc student of a local college.
{{/usCountry}}Patel, who stole two mobile phones, gold ornaments, wristwatch, ATM card and Rs 2,000 in cash, had tried to dispose of the articles with the help of Bhavesh Soni (19), a first year BSc student of a local college.
{{/usCountry}}The breakthrough came after the police found a photocopy of Soni’s driving licence, which a vendor sought while buying a stolen mobile from him.
An assistant professor of Organisational Behaviour and Human Resource Management, Pancholi was found dead by
her housemaid nearly an hour after Patel left the institute premises.
Patel has a criminal record of stealing vehicles in 2003. His antecedents were not verified by the IIIM-I administration, the police officer said.