IIT student in police remand for murder

SHIMLA - A student of the Indian Institute of Technology-Roorkee was sent to police remand till March 6 for allegedly murdering a female IIT-Delhi student at a hotel here, police said Monday.

“The accused, Gaurav Verma, a third-year architecture student of IIT-Roorkee, who was arrested from Haryana for murdering Pragati, was sent to police remand till March 6,” Shimla Superintendent of Police R.M. Sharma told IANS.

He said Gaurav was produced at a court here Sunday evening.

Pragati, a 22-year-old student of textile engineering who came here with Gaurav, was found murdered in the hotel room Saturday. Gaurav was missing from the scene.

He was subsequently arrested from the Jagadhari railway station in Haryana Sunday morning.

“The accused has confessed that he had murdered Pragati in the hotel around 1 p.m. Friday in a fit of rage,” Sharma said, adding that “both were heavily drunk when the crime took place”.

He said the duo had reached Shimla in the wee hours of Friday and checked in at Hotel Rashik.

When they did not come out of room Saturday, the hotel staff got suspicious and opened the room in the presence of the police. They found the woman’s body there but the boy was missing.

“After murdering her, Gaurav hired a cab and reached Chandigarh Saturday morning. There, he checked into a hotel where he tried to commit suicide. After that, he left for Roorkee from where he boarded a train for Bathinda (in Punjab). When the train halted at the Jagadhari railway station in Haryana, he was arrested,” Sharma said.

Pragati was a resident of Patna in Bihar, while Gaurav belonged to Manikapur in Gonda district of Uttar Pradesh. They were friends for the last three years.

Police found photographs of the duo on the victim’s laptop. Two knives, a broken liquor bottle allegedly used in the crime and a cake were also found at the scene.