NEW DELHI: A 24-year-old man allegedly murdered his 18-year-old girlfriend at his rented accommodation in southwest Delhi’s Munirka before spending hours driving around JNU road in search of a place to dump her body.His plan failed when the friend he had asked for help in disposing of the body secretly informed cops.The suspect, Anurag, was arrested Sunday. The body of the victim, Kanika, was recovered from his third-floor rented room.The complainant, a 23-year-old taxi driver and friend of Anurag’s, told police he received repeated calls from an unknown number around 9.15pm on Saturday.When he answered, it was Anurag on the line, claiming his phone was broken and asking him to meet urgently.When they met, Anurag allegedly told him that he had killed Kanika as he suspected she was talking to another man. He also claimed Kanika was his wife, the complainant told police.After unlocking his room, Anurag allegedly showed him Kanika’s body lying on a bed.He then took his friend’s phone, saying he needed to make a call, and then made him drive around JNU Road and Sanjay Van with him, repeatedly asking for help in dumping the body in the forest.Unable to alert anyone without his phone, the friend suggested that they first go to his house and discuss the matter there.After reaching outside, he told him that he needed to call his mother to open the gate and requested his mobile phone back. The moment he got the phone, the friend went upstairs and dialled 112, informing police.Police then arrested Anurag and recovered Kanika’s body, found with multiple injuries to the head, face and other parts.During the inspection of his room, Anurag allegedly admitted to assaulting Kanika with a wooden stick and a table.Cops seized the wooden stick fitted with a nail and two metal hinges, along with a blood-stained broken baby-stand table.Anurag told police he had hit her on the head five-six times with the table before stopping when she began bleeding. The FIR also states that several parts of the victim’s body had turned blue, indicating a brutal assault.Kanika, her parents’ only child, had discontinued her studies after Class 12 due to financial constraints and had taken up a job in the hospitality sector to support her them while saving money to enrol in a professional makeup artist course.Her father is an auto-rickshaw driver and her mother works at a hospital.“She was our only hope,” a family member told TOI.“She had been dating Anurag for about one-and-a-half years. We hadn’t heard from her for the past three days, and then we received the news that she had been murdered.”The family denied that Anurag and Kanika were married and said she had only recently turned 18.A case has been registered at Kishangarh police station under Section 103 (murder) of BNS.
