Patna, Dec. 19: National boxing champion from Uttarakhand Tanuja Kanyal, 22, found dead in a Hajipur hotel on Sunday, had eloped with her alleged killer a month ago.

Little did she know that her beau, Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) jawan Rakesh Kumar, was already married twice and had fathered three children.

Rakesh has been absconding after allegedly strangling Tanuja to death in the hotel room at Hajipur, about 20km south of Patna. Tanuja’s identity was ascertained from her award certificates of different boxing championships, including the National Women Championship, 2011 held in Dehradun, that were found in the hotel room.

Investigation carried out by Hajipur Town police revealed that Rakesh, a jawan of the 11th battalion of the SSB deployed at Pithoragarh in Uttarakhand, has, so far, lured two other girls and is married to both of them. The two girls survived his betrayal but Tanuja was not lucky.

“Rakesh, a resident of Shivnar village under Mokama police station in Patna rural, is a bigamist. He got married to a girl from Deoghar in Jharkhand, a few years ago. His wife is at present in Deoghar. She has two children from Rakesh,” said station house officer of Town police station Krishna Murari Gupta.

Gupta, who is heading the investigation team, told The Telegraph that Rakesh’s second wife, daughter of a police constable, hailed from Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh. The girl came in contact with Rakesh when he was posted in Madhya Pradesh, he said, adding that she, too, gave birth to a child. When the second wife visited Rakesh’s native village in Patna district, she came to know about Rakesh’s first marriage. “As she didn’t have any evidence to prove her relationship with Rakesh, she thought it was better to return home,” Gupta said.

According to police records, Tanuja had eloped with Rakesh from her house in November. “A missing case has been registered by Tanuja’s father Bhupal Singh Kanyal at Didihat police station,” he said.

When Gupta contacted the assistant commandant of the 11th battalion of the SSB in Uttarakhand, the latter told him that Rakesh had been on leave since November 15. “He was supposed to report to duty on December 7 but he could not,” the assistant commandant told Gupta over phone.

When contacted, the SSB inspector-general (frontier headquarters) in Patna, Aditya Mishra, said he would contact his counterparts in Uttarakhand to get details of Rakesh. “I received the information from you first,” he said.