Barely three days after the gruesome murder of 71-year-old Lalita Devi Goenka in her tenth-floor Alipore apartment, sleuths on Sunday night rounded up her domestic help, Rabindra Nath Santra, alias Rajesh, from his village in Balasore, Orissa.

The 20-year-old has been slapped with charges of murder. Santra was remanded in police custody for 12 days by judge Shankar Nath Das on Monday.

According to public prosecutor Shashanko Sekhar Choudhury, the sleuths had sought 14 days’ custody of the prime suspect, but the judge fixed August 27 for the next hearing.

“Police submitted a seizure list in court, in which they claim to have recovered Rs 1,53,500 from the accused, apart from a suitcase and clothes,” Choudhury said.

Lalita Devi was killed in her apartment in Shriniket, on Ashoka Road, early on Thursday. Her head was smashed with a crowbar before she was dragged into a storeroom, where her throat was slit.

“From the beginning, we were sure of an insider’s role in the crime. With Santra’s arrest, we are confident of wrapping up the case very soon,” said a senior officer of the detective department homicide wing. “Santra has confessed to the crime,” he added.

The sleuths first interrogated the security personnel, the liftman and the sweepers of the Alipore apartment block. “We came to know that two servants of the Goenka household were on leave. They had left for their village near Balasore on August 8. That raised our suspicion and we asked people if they had been sighted lately in the neighbourhood,” the officer said.

“One of the men we interrogated claimed to have seen Santra the day before the murder. We checked his movements and collected enough evidence to prove that Santra had been in the city on the day of the murder. We trailed him to Balasore, where we arrested him,” the officer added.

“Lalita Devi’s kin could not furnish details of the items missing from the apartment, but we came to know that an envelope, with Hemant Goenka’s name on it and containing more than Rs 2 lakh, had gone,” the officer said.

A major chunk of the booty recovered from Santra’s village home had notes of Rs 500 denomination.

“Though we are not sure if the murder was for monetary gain, we know that more than one person was involved. More arrests may follow,” the officer revealed.