Chennai: Missing nurse found dead, her friend's husband held

CHENNAI: Twelve days after a nurse was found missing from her residence in Choolaimedu, her murdered body was found packed in a gunny bag near Koyambedu on Wednesday. City police arrested Ajith Kumar (23), who is her friend's husband for the murder. He is suspected to have strangled the woman for one-and-half-sovereign gold chain, silver anklet and a cellphone - everything to gift his wife on her birthday.

The deceased, R Velvizhi (19) worked as a home nurse in a manpower agency and was staying in an accommodation provided by the agency at Veerapandi Nagar in Choolaimedu. Ajith Kumar who works as a driver in the same agency would drop the nurses back home, including his wife, Mahalakshmi, employed as a home nurse in the same building. Velvizhi's father, Rajendran turned suspicious, as she did not respond to his calls after April 6. Three days after failed attempts to reach her, he lodged a police complaint.

When the police launched a hunt and investigated all her acquaintances, they came across Ajith Kumar who misguided them by providing false facts about Velvizhi. Police said that Ajith told them the woman would always be on phone and possibly she could have eloped with her boyfriend. Later, when police checked the CCTV footages, they found Ajith acting fishy and went hard on him, when he finally confessed.

According to police sources, after repeats brickbats from his wife about his low income, he told her that he had landed a job in lens clinic and approached Velvizhi on April 6 for gold. When she refused, he strangled her with her dupatta and packet her in a gunny bag.

Later he bought a plastic bag and told the auto driver that he wanted to discard some waste and then, threw the bag in a vacant space in Koyambedu, which already had numerous garbage bags. After receiving Ajith's inputs, police recovered the decomposed body on Wednesday and sent it for a post mortem to government Kilpauk medical college and hospital.