Aarushi’s friends leave the Talwars’ home in Noida on Sunday. Picture by Prem Singh

Chandigarh/New Delhi, May 18: A 34-year-old woman was found with her throat slit in her bedroom in Chandigarh last night and hours later, the domestic hand suspected in the murder turned up dead 50km away.

Baljinder Sandhu, a property dealer, found wife Anuradha dead when he returned from a disco around 1am to their Sector 38 West home, police said.

Suspicion immediately fell on Vijay Pal alias Nikku, a youth in his early 20s who cooked for the couple and also helped Anuradha run her ground-floor boutique in the same building.

Nikku, who was paid Rs 15,000 a month, was missing with his motorcycle. But this morning he was found with his head smashed near a canal in Ropar, Punjab.

If Nikku was murdered, as officers think he was, the incidents would mirror Thursday night’s double murder of schoolgirl Aarushi Talwar and domestic help Hemraj in a Noida house.

Hemraj, 45, was initially suspected after Aarushi, 15, was found with her throat slit but was all the while lying in the terrace, killed the same way.

The focus of the investigation has now shifted, with the police grilling the girl’s dentist parents, their staff and “close relatives” amid suspicion that the murder weapon was a surgeon’s scalpel.

In Chandigarh, Baljinder told the police he had climbed up to the first floor with a neighbour’s help and broken open the door of Anuradha’s bedroom after she failed to answer the doorbell and frantic calls from his mobile phone.

Sources said the couple’s children — an 11-year-old girl and an eight-year-old boy — slept in another room whose door was bolted from outside, but the police wouldn’t confirm this.

A watchman in the neighbourhood has reported seeing Nikku leave the house about midnight on his motorcycle, the police said. Two persons were riding pillion, their faces hidden behind helmets. Nikku apparently told the watchman he would be back in five minutes.

“The murder seems well-planned. We’ll question the husband again. We are looking into the couple’s relations, too,” an officer said. “Baljinder apparently liked to visit discos alone.… Also, Anuradha apparently planned to travel abroad soon, by herself.”

He added: “Nikku’s father has alleged his son’s relationship with Baljinder had become strained.”

Nikku, hired six years ago, helped Baljinder with his business, too, and was trusted, Sandhu family sources said. Officers said some cash and ornaments were missing from Anuradha’s room.

In Noida, post-mortem reports suggested Aarushi and Hemraj were killed with similar, sharp-edged weapons within 10-15 minutes of each other.

Hemraj’s autopsy revealed he had not been drunk as initially alleged by the police. The cops had failed to find the man’s body for a whole day before a neighbour — a retired police officer — discovered it on Saturday.

Officers said the mobile phones of both victims were missing. A scan of their call records showed Aarushi had spoken to a classmate, Anmol, shortly before she was killed.

Anmol said they had spoken about school and other general matters. He added that Aarushi had “very good relations” with her parents.

The police have questioned former servants of the couple who, an officer said, had hired eight full-time and part-time hands one after another before recruiting Hemraj eight months ago.

The double-bed mattress on which Aarushi was sleeping the night of the murder was found, soaked in blood, on an adjoining terrace today, raising further questions about Noida police’s efficiency.

In Chandigarh, the police said two mobile phones and a PAN card in Nikku’s name had been found on the servant’s body. Nikku had taken his sister, who also worked for the family, to hometown Malout in Punjab’s Muktsar, 200km from Chandigarh, and returned only four days ago.

Anuradha’s father Madan Lal today rushed to the house from Punjab’s Batala, 250km away, but would not step inside. “What is there for me inside?” he wept.

But he consciously avoided Baljinder’s father, who sat with two friends outside the house, and kept himself confined to a corner of a park in front of the house.