Delhi: Woman doctor killed, flatmate on the run

NEW DELHI: A 25-year-old doctor working in a private hospital was stabbed to death in central Delhi’s Ranjeet Nagar on Tuesday night. The suspected murderer is believed to be her friend and flatmate who worked in the same institution. He is on the run, according to police.
Police suspect that Garima Mishra, who was to return home to Gorakhpur on Wednesday, had an argument with Chandra Prakash Verma during which he attacked her with a kitchen knife.
According to Gautam Khurana, the flat owner, Mishra’s cousin reached the apartment at 10.45pm on Tuesday enquiring about her whereabouts. He told Khurana that they were to board a bus to Gorakhpur from Dhaula Kuan, but her phone had been unreachable since 8pm.
“I asked him to check the room upstairs but he found it locked,” disclosed Khurana. “He wanted to break open the door, but I persuaded him to first take a look through the grille above the door.”
The cousin became visibly agitated on doing this, and the third flatmate, Rakesh, broke open the padlock. Khurana recalled finding Mishra lying in a pool of blood near her bed. Her belongings, all packed, lay in one corner. Her throat was slit and there was a stab wound on her body. A broken kitchen knife was found near the body.
Mandeep Singh Randhawa, DCP (Central), said that a case of murder has been registered. Doctors told the cops that the stab to her chest and slitting of her throat had caused loss of blood that led to death. Mishra’s body was handed over to the family members on Wednesday after the autopsy.
Footage from a CCTV camera showed Verma leaving the house around 7.45pm on Tuesday. Rakesh claimed that Verma had left with a backpack, telling him that he was going out to return some books to a friend. He had subsequently switched off the phone.
Verma, a resident of Bahraich in UP, had completed his MBBS from a Lucknow college and is a junior doctor in the hospital. Investigators will visit his hometown to try and trace him. A few of his friends, including Rakesh, are being questioned about his possible whereabouts.
Khurana revealed that Mishra, Verma and Rakesh had shifted to the apartment in January. After requesting Khurana to allow her to stay along with the two men, she had move in a fortnight after Verma and Rakesh. She is reported to have met Verma in November 2018 and struck up a friendship.
Apparently, Mishra had quit her job to return home and pursue higher studies. She had got her MBBS degree from a college in Gorakhpur. Her father, Badrinath Mishra, lives with her elder brother and sister, both engineers, in Bengaluru.