A man working in a meat shop in Thakurpukur has been arrested for alleged murder of homemaker Sandhya Sardar on Diwali night, who was found dead on a footpath on Friday morning.
Police said Khairul Mondal, alias Raju, a resident of Bishnupur in South 24-Parganas is one of the employees of a meat shop situated near the place where the woman was found dead.
“Preliminary inquiry has revealed that Khairul was in an intoxicated state. He had tried to molest the victim when she had resisted, he strangulated her manually and left her on the footpath,” said an officer.
The cops said they found Mondal and detained him on the basis of suspicion early on Saturday. “On prolonged interrogation he confessed his crime,” said the officer.
Mondal was arrested and charged with murder on Saturday evening. He will be produced before a court on Sunday.
The police said they were probing if Mondal was known to the victim from before.
“We are examining several people in the neighbourhood to check if the accused knew the woman from before,” said an officer.
Sardar, 52, was found murdered on a footpath off Santosh Roy Road in Thakurpukur early on Friday morning.
People in the neighbourhood identified her as Sandhya Sardar whose home was not far from the place where she was found.
Earlier on Friday, neither her husband nor her mother-in-law had been able to tell police the exact time when she had gone out of their home.
“Her husband’s statement had a lot of inconsistencies. But based on evidence collected from the spot the role of a third person became clear,” said an officer of Thakurpukur police station.