‘On the run, killer served at Golden Temple; arrested’

LUCKNOW: The alleged killer of a 23-year-old woman dental student was doing community service at the Golden Temple in Amritsar while being on the run after the murder on June 10 in Cantonment police station area here.

He landed in police custody on Tuesday when he returned to the city to meet his family members.

The victim was pursuing Bachelor of Dental Sciences (BDS) from a reputed college in the city.

Police said the accused, Prakash Chandra Arya, who was an ‘anudeshak’ (computer instructor) at Vidhan Bhawan, stayed near the residence of the victim woman, Priya Kumari, in Durgapuri colony of Cantonment’s Nilmatha locality.

They said the crime was fallout of Arya’s one-sided liking for the woman and he suspected her of having a relationship with another person.

Circle officer of Cantonment Santosh Kumar Singh said Arya had murdered the woman by hitting her multiple times on head and forehead with a stone, and later tried to hang her body to show it as suicide case, when she alone in her house on June 10.

Singh said Arya had disappeared when the girl’s body was recovered from her house on June 11. He said Arya stayed in Bareilly for a few days before he escaped to Punjab’s Ludhiana district. “The accused then over two months at the Golden Temple in Amritsar, where he was doing community service,” the circle officer said.

He said the accused returned to Lucknow to meet his family members believing that the police might have closed the case by now. “Police, however, were keeping track on his family members’ movement and arrested him when he contacted them on Tuesday. A reward of ₹15,000 was announced over his head by the SSP Lucknow after he remained elusive for three months,” Singh said.