The Malwani police on Monday made an arrest in connection with the alleged murder of compère Arpita Tiwary, who was found dead under mysterious circumstances in December last year.
On December 11 last year, Tiwary was found to have died due to a fall from a great height in the premises of the building where her boyfriend, Pankaj Jadhav, was staying. The police registered a complaint of murder under the Indian Penal Code.
According to the Malwani police, the arrested accused has been identified as Amit Kumar Hazra, a friend of Tiwary and Mr. Jadhav, who was present in Mr. Jadhav’s 15th floor apartment when Tiwary died.
“Mr. Hazra was subjected to a polygraph test earlier this year, and we found contradictions in his responses during the tests and the claims that he had made about the sequence of events on the night of Tiwary’s death. Based on this, we placed him under arrest on Monday,” said Senior Police Inspector Deepak Phatangre, Malwani police station.
Sources said that an analysis of Mr. Hazra’s Facebook account showed that he was close to Tiwary and the two met regularly.
“We have reason to suspect that Mr. Hazra was trying to win over Tiwary’s affection, as he knew that her relationship with Mr. Jadhav was troubled. The possibility of Tiwary being killed over this cannot be denied, but we need to interrogate Mr. Hazra further,” a police officer said.
The officer said Mr. Jadhav continues to remain a suspect in the case.
“Mr. Hazra has been remanded in police custody till January 20. We are conducting investigations to ascertain the motive behind the murder,” Mr. Phatangre said.
Both Mr. Hazra and Mr. Jadhav had earlier told the police that Tiwary had locked herself inside the bathroom after a party at Mr. Jadhav’s residence on December 10. They said that they only found out much later that she had pried open the bathroom window and jumped out.
Postmortem examinations had indicated the injuries to her body were consistent with a fall from a great height, but could not throw any light on whether she was thrown or jumped on her own. The fact that she was in a partial state of undress had raised suspicions.
Her family, too, had told the police that they suspected foul play.
