Bengaluru: The killer of 31-year-old IBM techie Kusum Rani, who was strangled to death at her flat in South East Bengaluru on Tuesday, was arrested in Haryana early Thursday by the city police.
The arrested has been identified as Sukhbir Singh, 30, a software engineer and a native of Palwal district in Haryana.
The accused had worked in Bengaluru with Yahoo India and Accenture between 2011 and 2013, after which he was unemployed, the police said. He is being brought to the city on Thursday by the police.
According to the police, Sukhbir got acquainted with Kusum, a divorcee, on social media in late December last year. He had seen her profile in Shaadi.com and sent her a Facebook request on December 31 which Kusum accepted.
Later on January 9, they exchanged phone numbers and started talking, the police said.
“Sukhbir had come down to the city by flight on January 19, on Tuesday, telling Kusum that he had some work in Bengaluru and would meet her at her flat after his work for lunch. Kusum insisted that he make an entry in the security register at the gate,” said Dr M.B. Boralingaiah, DCP South East.
“Interestingly, Sukhbir wrote his name correctly, but entered an incorrect contact number to mislead others in case he acted foul. The CCTV footage was not clear about his identification except for some clues on his physical description,” the DCP added.
According to the police, their first meeting did not go well as Kusum was unhappy that Sukhbir was unemployed. After lunch, she started losing interest and sensing this, Sukhbir demanded that she give him Rs 50,000 as he had come down only to see her.
Kusum refused to give him the money. He then asked her to at least buy him air-tickets to Delhi and give him at least Rs 3,000-5,000 for his expenses as he was not carrying any cash. Kusum got upset and told him to leave the house.
A heated argument followed by a scuffle broke out. Sukhbir strangled Kusum using a laptop charger chord and later stabbed her on her head using a pen and killed her.
He then left his blood soaked jeans near a vent at Kusum’s house and wore one of Kusum’s jeans from her wardrobe, the police said.
The accused then fled with her three ATM cards, two cheque books and her phone, He put them in her laptop bag, locked the door and walked away.
According to the police, while on his way to the airport, Sukhbir called up the bank using Kusum's phone and requested for a new PIN number since Kusum had forgotten the existing one.
The bank responded immediately and sent a new PIN number to Kusum’s phone, using which Sukhbir withdrew Rs 11,000 from Bengaluru and took a flight to Mumbai.
From there, he took another flight to Delhi and withdrew Rs 34,000, to repay the money he had borrowed from one of his friends.
Sukhbir then took his car that was parked at Delhi International Airport and drove to Palwal, where he was picked up by the city cops in less than 24 hours.
South East police had formed six teams that were working on tracking the movements of the accused.
The teams started collecting his profile details using social media communication between him and the victim, call detail records, tower locations, air-travel documents, and zeroed in on him successfully with the help of the local police in Palwal. Sukhbir Singh will be brought to the city on Thursday night.
