Dehradun: A 25-year-old woman was allegedly murdered by her boyfriend who then burnt her body in a forest. However, he told the police that his girlfriend had fallen off the third floor, and in a state of panic he performed the 'last rites'.
The police recovered Nivedita Mukherjee's charred remains on the Mussoorie-Kimadi Road on Sunday by the local police after a six-hour search with search dogs. She was working at a Dehradun-based IT company.
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Nivedita Mukherjee a native of West Bengal, met 31-year-old Ankit Chaudhary who hails from Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh through a common friend last year. He operates a construction business in Dehradun. On April 25th, she told her family back in West Bengal that she was moving in with Ankit but three days later she stopped answering her phone.
Her family grew suspicious and traced Ankit via social media, when they contacted him he told them that they had an argument and she left the house but would be back soon. He then used the victim's social media account to talk to her cousin, Antara, pretending to be Nivedita all the while.
“I last heard from Nivedita in April when she told us that she was moving in with her boyfriend. When we spoke to Ankit, he told us that he was also trying to find my sister while sending us messages from her social media account posing as her. It was only after Nivedita kept dodging our calls that we got suspicious. When we confronted Ankit, he told us that she had fallen from the balcony and died,” Antara told Times of India.
Nivedita's family filed a complaint and the police registered an FIR against Chaudary. The family from Burdwan approached Dehradun police and alleged that their daughter, Nivedita Mukherjee, had been murdered by her live-in partner. When they interrogated the accused he broke down and took him to the spot he said that he drove 15 kms away and used petrol to burn Nivedita's body.
The officer involved in the case said that he has been booked for murder as the motive behind Nivedita's murder hasn't be ascertained yet. They dismiss the balcony story as there is a four-foot-long grill which makes it impossible for anybody to fall off.
"The accused said the woman fell from the balcony at midnight. Why didn’t he call an ambulance?", the officer involved in the investigation was quoted by TOI.
Forensic experts have confirmed that the remains belong to a female and are examining them. “We found bones, including skull, a hand and a leg. They had been dispersed throughout the area,” said Rajesh Shah, station officer, Rajpur.
The investigation is still going on and Nivedita's family is hopeful that they will get justice.