Guwahati, Sept. 1: A 19-year-old college student was arrested today on charges of killing his mother for money on Tuesday.

Police arrested Ankit Saikia, a BA first year student of S.B. Deorah College here, this morning, as they believe he had killed his mother, Puja Saikia, 38, whose body was recovered from a house at Tarun Nagar here on Wednesday.

Puja worked as a housekeeping staff of St John’s Hospital at Christianbasti and was living as caretaker in the house of D.N. Pathak, an excise inspector who stays outside the state.

The police said Ankit had confessed that he had come to the house at Tarun Nagar with his mother on Tuesday morning and had strangulated her to death before taking away her bank ATM card and withdrawing Rs 11,000.

Puja, a widow, had been missing after her hospital night duty on Monday. As she did not respond to phone calls on Tuesday and Wednesday, her family members came to Pathak’s house but found it locked from outside. She was found dead in the storeroom after they broke in.