Ghaziabad: BPO employee shot dead outside residential society, role of three suspected

Sources said that an unidentified young woman, who fled on her two-wheeler after one of the two men opened fire, had approached her and accompanied her downstairs.

A 26-year-old woman from Uttarakhand who was staying alone at a rented flat in Kanha Complex residential society in Sahibabad was shot dead by two unidentified men on the main road outside her society on Thursday afternoon. Police said the woman was working with a BPO in Noida.

The woman was good at sketching and had painted on her wall. (Sakib Ali/HT Photo)

Sources said that an unidentified young woman, who fled on her two-wheeler after one of the two men opened fire, had approached her and accompanied her downstairs.

HT reporter points to the spot where a bullet had hit. (Sakib Ali/HT Photo)

The police identified the victim as Rama Panwar, alias Riya Chakraborthy, of Rudrapur in Uttarakhand. She had married a Delhi-based man who committed suicide in 2015. Chobh Singh Panwar, her father-in-law, came from Delhi to lodge an FIR. He said that his son had married Riya in 2013.

“After his death, Riya moved out of our house and stayed alone. They also had a daughter, who is now five years old and studies in Nursery. After she moved out, there was hardly any contact. She called up not more than three times during this entire period and never told us that she was staying in Ghaziabad,” he said.

The victim’s neighbours said that she mostly stayed indoors and hardly had any visitor. Before she was shot dead, Rama was sitting at the office of a web developer on the same floor where she stayed.

“She had come to get Rs3,500 transferred to her account and paid me in cash. She sometimes visited our office, which is on the same floor. She was sitting here after I had transferred the money to her account. Just then, a young woman arrived at the main gate of the office and Riya went out to meet her. The office guard told that they both hugged each other and the woman took her downstairs,” Shafiq Ahmad, the owner of the web development firm, said.

Riya Chakraborthy (Sourced Image)

“She did not talk much about her family but once showed me a photograph of hers and a man, who she said was her boyfriend,” he said.

Riya went to the main road and the two women were conversing when a man in a white shirt approached her and fired two shots from close range. “She was shot in the chest and her arm. The shot on the chest proved fatal and she died at a nearby hospital,” said Jitendra Kumar Singh, station house officer, Sahibabad police station.

Raju, a tailor who runs a small makeshift shop outside the Kanha Complex, said that he saw the two women walking past his shop.

“Riya got some clothes stitched from me and often shared food with me. I could not identify the other woman but they walked past my shop. Barely a minute later, I heard shots being fired and rushed to the spot, barely 20 yards from the society. Riya was bleeding and was lying on the ground while the man in the white shirt was flaunting the pistol in his hand and was rushing to board a bike ridden by another man,” he said.

“Within seconds, the woman also boarded her scooty and sped. Riya stayed alone but once an old man had visited her. She told me that it was her father,” he said.

Riya died at a nearby hospital. The police said that she worked at a call centre in Noida but was searching for another job.

“We have received a formal complaint from her father-in-law and have formed teams to investigate the murder. We are also scanning footage of CCTV cameras in the vicinity and the victim’s phone call details. We have identified a friend, Abhishek, a resident of Ghaziabad. We are still on look out for the woman,” said Jitendra Kumar Singh, station house officer, Sahibabad police station.

The shooting incident took place barely 300 metres away from the Karan Gate police post near Hindon airbase. Rama’s neighbours said that she had shifted to the rented flat around six months ago.