Police claim breakthrough in Bengaluru IBM techie murder, arrest suspect from Haryana

He has been arrested from Haryana early this morning, said Banaglore police officer P Harisekaran.

Sukhbir Singh and Ms Singla had known each other only on social media.

“Once she transferred the money online to him, he blocked all communications with her, including e-mails, phone, and Whatsapp accounts, which prompted Kusum to lodge a complaint with the Kadugodi police”, a senior police officer said.

Singh hails from Haryana and has worked as a software engineer with multinational companies but is now unemployed, he said, adding he would be brought to the city.

Sukhbir Singh is 25-year-old. On January 19, the accused is seen visiting her flat on CCTV footage recovered from the apartment. Both were in the room for three hours. There is speculation that both of them could have argued and the accused then allegedly used a sharp object to attack Kusum and then strangulate her. He reached the airport by 10.35 pm and took a flight to Mumbai, from where he took another flight and reached Delhi by 3 am. “He withdrew Rs 11,000 by using one of the ATM cards in Bangalore”. Her body was found in a pool of blood by her flatmate when she returned from work last evening around 7.30 pm.

According to the police, the Rani had shared her apartment with Nidhi Sharma from September 2015. Kadugodi police rushed to the spot and cordoned off the entire flat after which blood samples and hair strands were collected from the crime scene by the forensic team.

The woman has been identified as Kusum Rani, a native of Punjab.