Bhubaneswar: The body of a 27-year-old doctor working with a private hospital here was found at her rented accommodation in Chandrasekharpur on Thursday night.

While police suspects that Manaswini Barik, a native of Baragarh district, committed suicide by injecting sedatives, her family members suspected foul play.

The police said that Manaswini, who worked in the cardiology department of the private hospital, was staying with her brother in a rented house. "Her brother who is also a doctor at the same hospital had left for his native place on Wednesday for nuakhai festival. Manaswini had told him to visit her house on Thursday," said a police official.

However, family members of Manaswini were worried after she did not receive their calls to her on Thursday evening.

Later, her brother asked two of his colleagues and a neighbour to visit the rented accommodation.

"They visited the house and found the door being locked from inside. As she did not respond to repeated knocks, they broke into the house and found her lying on the bed. They also found three syringes and sedatives in the room. They immediately rushed her to the hospital, where she was working, and doctors declared her brought dead," said the police officer.

The police said that Manaswini got married three years ago, but later the couple had a mutual divorce in March this year. The police said that her family members said that they were planning for her second marriage.

Manaswini, a homeopathy doctor, had been working at the private hospital as a junior doctor for more than one and half years.

"She was very head strong. She never broke down despite her post-marriage emotional trauma. So it is very difficult to believe that she committed suicide. Last week, I had a talk with her and she did not seem to be under any pressure," said P.K. Bhol, one of her friends.

Manaswini's father also echoed the same feeling and demanded a thorough probe into the incident.

"She could not have committed suicide. There is something mysterious behind the incident. The police should conduct a detailed probe," her father Surya Narayan Barik said. Deputy commissioner of police Anup Kumar Sahoo said that prima-facie it appeared to be a case of suicide. "We have found a dairy from her room and are going through it. We are trying to ascertain the cause of suicide," said Sahoo.