Lucknow: Close on the heels of the brutal rape and murder of a doctor at a Kolkata hospital triggering a nationwide outrage, a nurse was sexually assaulted before being killed in Udham Singh Nagar district in Uttarakhand.
The accused, a daily wage labourer, who was a resident of Bareilly district in Uttar Pradesh, was arrested from Jodhpur in Rajasthan, according to the police sources.
A police official said that the victim, who worked as a nurse at a hospital in Rudrapur in Udham Singh Nagar district of the hill state and lived at Bilaspur in Uttar Pradesh, was raped and killed while she was returning home from work around a fortnight back. The accused dumped her body in the bushes.
Police said that the accused, identified as Dharmendra, later fled to Rajasthan.
A missing person report was lodged by the victim’s sister after which the police launched a search for her. The police recovered her body, which was reduced to a skeleton, from the Dibdiba area last week.
Police said that the accused, who had also looted cash and other belongings, including the cell phone of the victim, was traced to Jodhpur in Rajasthan after he made a call to his wife using the same cell phone.
According to the sources, the postmortem report of the victim suggested that she had fought back fiercely after the accused caught hold of her. The accused had hit her several times before sexually assaulting her and later strangling her to death.
Meanwhile, the rape and murder of a doctor at the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital, has sparked massive outrage across the country.
Published 15 August 2024, 17:37 IST