Techie 'stalker' detained

Antara Das

TT, Dec. 26: A team from Maharashtra police today detained Santosh Kumar, the Bangalore youth suspected of stalking and harassing techie Antara Das for more than a year before her murder in Pune last Friday.

Antara, whose family lives in the Bakultala neighbourhood of Behala, worked for Capgemini in Pune. She was hacked to death while on her way home from work.

Sources in Pune police's Dehu Road division said the decision to send a team to Bangalore and detain Santosh was taken after his description matched that provided by Satyendra Sinha, the motorcyclist who had rushed Antara to Dhansree Hospital after she was attacked around 8.10pm on Friday.

Satyendra was on his way home when he spotted Antara lying on a pavement at KNB Chowk in Talwade and screaming for help. The police quoted him as saying that he spotted the suspected assailant, who was in a black-and-blue striped T-shirt.

"We collected the description of the suspected attacker from an eyewitness. A team left for Bangalore in search of the youth and is on its way back now. Let's see," Barkat Mujawar, deputy superintendent of police (Dehu Road division), told Metro over phone.

Police sources in Pune said the preliminary post-mortem report suggested that Antara died of acute haemorrhagic shock caused by heavy bleeding from a severed carotid artery and the internal jugular vein. The assailant had struck her on the left side of the neck.

Investigators said the assailant was possibly aware of Antara's office timings and was waiting for her to return. Her phone records show that she had last called a man who would carry cooked food to her paying guest accommodation. The man told the police that she would be going to a friend's place and that she wanted her dinner delivered at that address.