Bride found murdered hours before wedding.

Mangalore Today/DHNS

Bangalore: May 22, 2013: A young woman, who was supposed to be in the wedding hall exchanging wedding vows with her fiancé, was instead found murdered under mysterious circumstances on a vacant plot of land next to Platinum City Apartment at Goruguntepalya.

 

The victim, identified as Ramya, 25, was strangled with a cable wire found wound around her neck, police said. She also suffered an injury, inflicted with a sharp weapon, near her left eyebrow. There were, however, no other external injuries, according to T R Suresh, in-charge DCP (North).

The murder came to light when some passersby alerted the jurisdictional police who rushed to the spot and took the body to M S Ramaiah Hospital. Initially, the police were unable to establish the victim’s identity. But as television news channels broke the story, broadcasting the victim’s visuals, her parents – an aged couple, Bhojaraja and Kalavathi – turned up at Yeshwantpur police station by afternoon. They complained about their daughter’s disappearance since Tuesday night, and hoped that she was not the girl being shown on television channels as having found dead.

Their hopes, however, soon turned into gloom as the police confirmed that their missing daughter was indeed the girl found murdered. According to Kalavathi, Ramya was to get married to her boyfriend, Nandan Gowda, at a temple in Mahalakshmi Layout in the morning. Hours before her parents began her frantic search, Ramya had gone out, at 6 pm on Tuesday, to meet Gowda, saying she wanted to show him the wedding ring. But as she failed to return even by late night, her family panicked. “We called on her mobile phone but it was switched off. We called Gowda, but he said he didn’t meet her in the evening. We kept searching for her all night,” Kalavathi stated in the complaint.

Gowda, who had planned to marry Ramya surreptitiously without informing his family, joined his fianceé’s family in the morning, looking out for her.

Ramya told him that she was with Meera, the couple’s common friend, when he called her at 8 pm on Tuesday, Gowda told the police. The mystery, however, deepened when the mobile phones of both Ramya and Meera were switched off at the same time and place.

As Meera remains untraceable, police suspect she is involved in Ramya’s murder. Later on, police were able to locate her house, in Yeshwantpur, besides getting her photograph. Three special teams have been formed to trace Meera, Suresh added.

In a late night development, police detained Gowda and his friend Reddy who had introduced the former to Ramya last year.

While police have denied the arrest, sources suspect the two are involved in Ramya’s murder.