A courier delivery person and a woman serving as the content writer for a dating app were arrested on Sunday for their alleged connection with the murder of Adarsh Losalka, a 33-year-old chartered accountant whose body was found in a Kasba hotel on Saturday.

According to the preliminary postmortem findings, Losalka’s death was due to the effects of mechanical asphyxia resulting from strangulation. Police have also found remains of food mixed with alcohol in the stomach.

Police identified them as Dhruba Mitra, 20, from Coopers Camp in Ranaghat, Nadia, and the woman as Kamal Saha, 20, from Barrackpore.

The accused were presently staying together at Purba Sinthi in the Dum Dum area.

The police said that the woman and Losalka had decided to meet on Friday after they had met through a dating app. However, trouble started when the woman asked for money before spending time with him, sources said.

“Preliminary investigation has revealed that a dispute cropped up over the payment. We are verifying the details,” said an officer of Kasba police station attached to the case.

“They were arrested from the Kasba police station on Sunday afternoon,” said joint commissioner (crime), Kolkata Police, Rupesh Kumar.

According to the police, Losalka had checked into one room at Hotel Consulate, while Kamal and her friend Mitra had checked into another room of the same hotel.

“Initially, the woman went to the room where Losalka was staying. After some time, her friend also joined her in the room. They were seen in CCTV footage walking out of the room early on Saturday,” said an officer.

According to investigators, Losalka was smothered with a pillow while his legs were tied up with a towel.

The duo, after checking out of the hotel on Saturday morning, rented two app bikes to get away from Kasba. They again rejoined at Ultadanga, the police said.

A few hours later, when Losalka did not come out of his room or check out at the scheduled time, the housekeeping staff entered the room using the duplicate key and found him lying on the bed, wearing almost nothing, the police said.

His legs were tied with a towel, the housekeeping staff told the police.

Later on Sunday afternoon, the duo went to Kasba police station and surrendered, sources said.

According to their statement to the police, they had “no intention” to kill the man.

The victim’s brother has reported to the police that his brother’s mobile phone and wallet were missing.

During the investigation, the police reportedly found that Losalka had “left” all the WhatsApp groups of which he was a member on Saturday afternoon, suggesting that the assailants who had his phone had deactivated the WhatsApp from his phone around the same time.

“It appears to be an effort to wipe off the trail of chats between him and the accused. Once the phone is recovered, we will send it to the forensic department for retrieval of data,” said a senior officer of the detective department of Kolkata Police.

The duo will be produced at court on Monday, said a police officer.