Even as rest of the Chennai was stirring awake on Friday morning, the Nungambakkam railway station witnessed a ghastly murder of a techie in broad daylight.
The victim, 24-year-old software engineer S. Swathi, was hacked to death by a young man on the platform. Till late into the night, the police had no clue why she was hacked, though they claim they had narrowed down on the suspect thanks to CCTV grabs of a young man walking with a backpack.
According to the police, Swathi was the second daughter of Santhana Gopalakrishnan, a retired central government employee. After finishing her engineering degree at Sairam Engineering College, she was placed in Infosys in Mahindra City.
Said an eyewitness, “On Friday, there were not many people in the station. A lean-looking man, suspected to be in his late twenties, wearing a light checked shirt and dark trousers, walked towards her and without any warning began to hack her with an aruval (billhook). He struck her four times, and she fell down bleeding.” The accused then ran along the tracks towards Railway Border Road and escaped.
The Government Railway Police has formed special teams to nab the accused.
“We are checking her cell phone records. We have clues and we hope the culprit will be arrested at the earliest. The CCTV footage of the suspect has also been obtained,” said a senior GRP officer.
