The four suspects on their way to jail in a prison van in Bhubaneswar on Wednesday. Picture by Ashwinee Pati

Bhubaneswar, Sept. 19: Three business administration students and another youngster running a betel shop were arrested last night for allegedly killing a 72-year-old woman at her Acharya Vihar residence last Thursday.

They had also injured the husband of the deceased who is still battling for life at a private hospital here.

“The arrested students used to stay in a hostel run in a building owned by the elder daughter of the deceased at Patia. They committed the crime for looting the couple,” said deputy commissioner of police Nitinjeet Singh.

While two of them were MBA students, one was studying for a BBA degree in the capital city. The fourth accused, 24-year-old Butu Jena, used to run a betel shop in the locality.

Kunja Bihari Panigrahi, 75, and his 72-year-old wife Jyotsnadevi were found lying in a profusely bleeding condition on the second floor of their home at Acharya Vihar on Friday morning. While Jyotsnadevi was found dead, Kunjabihari was critically injured and was admitted to the intensive care unit of a city hospital in a comatose stage.

The police identified the accused persons as Bijaya Kumar Yadav, 22, from Gop in Puri district, Priyaranjan Pati, 23, from Nayagarh district, Butu Jena, 24, from Jagatsinghpur and Ranjit Kumar Jena, 21, from Bhadrak.

Bijay was studying for his BBA while Priyaranjan and Ranjit were MBA students in private colleges in the city. Priyaranjan also used to work as a part-time data entry operator at a business process outsourcing unit at Saheed Nagar. The fourth accused, Butu, was staying near Maharaja cinema hall at Acharya Vihar Square.

Singh said that the accused were aware of the properties of the old couple and had planned to loot the senior citizens.

“These students, along with Butu, reached the building around 8.30pm on Thursday. They first tried to rob Kunja Bihari, a retired superintending engineer, of his belongings. When he resisted their attempts, they hit him with a wooden stick and smacked his head with an empty gas cylinder even before he could shout. The old man fell unconscious. All this while Jyotsnadevi was on the ground floor of the building. When she went upstairs, they strangulated her to death with a computer cable wire,” said Singh.

He added that these youths took away cash worth Rs 900, a laptop, two mobile phones of the victims and one necklace. All these have been seized from the accused, said the DCP.

The police said they cracked the case by working on clues from the visitors’ and boarders’ records of the hostel maintained by the deceased. The old couple had converted most parts of the building into a hostel and rented it out to around 100 students.