The police are looking for a third person — a woman — who is believed to have accompanied murder victim Roopali Mishra (25) and her companion to U.G. Regal lodge in Cottonpet.
On verification of the CCTV footage at the reception area, the police found that there was another girl who accompanied the couple when the two came to check in. She left as the duo entered the lounge. “We are tracking her down as we believe she is a common friend and can be a crucial link to the case,” said a police officer investigating the case.
Meanwhile, the Cottopnet police handed over Roopali’s body to her family after the post-mortem here on Saturday. Roopali, from a lower middle class family from Kanpur, had come to Bangalore in search of a job. She was the sole breadwinner as she had lost her father. Her family is so hard up they could not afford to come to Bangalore to claim the body. It was the police who funded their expenses.
Roopali was found murdered in Room 265 on February 6 with multiple stab injuries. She had checked in on February 3 with a man who called himself Santosh Kumar Yadav from Kanpur. He checked out the same day and it was only three days later the hotel staff discovered her putrefying body in the cupboard.
The police found out her identity through an ID card found in her bag and traced her roommate at the PG accommodation in Kumaraswamy Layout.
