A medical officer with the Uttar Pradesh health department has been arrested on the charge of throttling, stabbing and shooting dead a gynaecologist after their relationship allegedly turned bitter over marriage.

Police in Agra said the medical officer, Vivek Tiwari, had confessed to the murder, committed in his car late on Tuesday night. According to Tiwari, he and Yogita Gautam, 26, had been in a relationship for the past seven years.

Tiwari, posted at Orai in Jalaun district, had been a year senior to Yogita, a resident doctor at SN Medical College in Agra, during MBBS at a private medical college in Moradabad.

Tiwari was booked on a complaint from Yogita’s elder brother. According to the investigators, hair and skin samples collected from the victim matched those of Tiwari. Tiwari told reporters at the police station on Thursday morning that he had been carrying a knife with the intention of killing Yogita, who was from Delhi.

“We had been in a relationship for the past seven years. She had been mounting pressure on me for immediate marriage. I had asked her to wait till my younger sister got married. After a fight in the car, I throttled her before stabbing her in the neck with the knife and throwing her out,” Tiwari, who hails from Kanpur, said. The police said there was also a gunshot wound in the neck.

However, Yogita’s family denied that she had ever forced Tiwari for marriage, saying that it was Tiwari who had been putting pressure on her for marriage and that their relationship had gone bad because of this.

The crime came to light when villagers of Bamroli Katara informed the police on Wednesday morning about the body of a woman lying in a bush.

Yogita’s elder brother Mohindar Kumar Gautam had come to Agra from Delhi on Tuesday night along with their mother, Asha Gautam, to meet her but found her house locked, following which they spent the night in a hotel.

Mohindar told reporters that personnel at MM Gate police station had refused to accept a complaint when he went there at 9am on Wednesday to lodge a missing person’s diary, alleging that it was only nine hours later, around 6pm, that they told him to go to the post-mortem department of a nearby hospital to see if a body found at Bamroli Katara was that of his sister.

“It was after I identified my sister that the police registered a case on the basis of my complaint, in which I mentioned my suspicion that Tiwari had kidnapped her,” said Mohindar, also a doctor in Delhi.

“Tiwari had called up my mother around 5am on Wednesday and claimed that he had been trying to call Yogita for the past several hours but the calls had not gone through.

He claimed he wanted to find out if everything was fine. I think he had killed Yogita before calling my mother,” Mohinder said, adding that Yogita had blocked Tiwari’s number a few days ago and told her mother that she didn’t want to talk to him.

“Tiwari was a year senior to Yogita in medical college. Of late, he had been putting pressure on her to marry him. Tiwari had tried to convince us also. But my sister had started disliking him,” Mohindar added.