A 25-year-old doctor, Garima Mishra, was found with multiple stab wounds and her throat slit at a rented apartment in central Delhi. Her flatmate, Chandra Prakash Verma, also a doctor, is the prime suspect for the murder, police said.

The woman, who belongs to Uttar Pradesh’s Gorakhpur, and the 29-year-old man lived in separate rooms in a third-floor flat in Ranjit Nagar. Police stated that he has been missing since the incident. A third flatmate, who was not in the apartment at the time of the murder, is being questioned. All three worked as interns at a government hospital in Karol Bagh.

Police suspect that the victim and Verma may have had an argument, following which he killed her using either a kitchen knife or a surgical blade. A case of murder (Indian Penal Code 302) has been registered at the Ranjit Nagar police station.

Deputy Commissioner of Police (Central), Mandeep Singh Randhawa, said that the exact chain of events leading to the murder and the motive behind it can be ascertained only when the suspect is caught. Verma is currently the prime suspect because he is missing since Tuesday night.

Police added that footage from a CCTV camera installed in the lane outside the building shows Verma leaving the area at 8.45 pm. Mishra is estimated to have been killed around the same time. All the three doctors were preparing for their Doctor of Medicine (MD) exams and were taking classes at a coaching institute in Delhi’s Rajendra Nagar.

Gautam Khurana, who owns the building where the three lived, said that Mishra’s cousin, Shivendra Pandey, saw the body at 10.30 pm on Tuesday when he came to check on her as she was not answering phone calls from family members for the last two hours. Pandey told the police that Mishra had to leave for Gorakhpur on Tuesday night and had a bus ticket for 10 pm.

Khurana mentioned that Mishra’s room was locked from outside. Her cousin wanted to break it open because he panicked after noting that the ceiling fan was on. Khurana added that he arranged a stool and Pandey climbed on it to peep inside through the ventilator. He saw her bleeding on the floor with her luggage kept nearby.

Pandey called the police control room and a team from the Ranjit Nagar police station broke open the door and rushed Mishra to a hospital, where she was declared brought dead.

Mishra’s second flatmate, Rakesh Yadav, said that he had found Mishra’s room locked when he returned from a nearby temple around 9pm but did not suspect anything wrong. He told the police that he was in his room when Khurana and Pandey came.

A police officer stated that Yadav told them that he had last met Verma in the lane while he was returning home from the temple. He was carrying a backpack and looked in a hurry. When Yadav asked him where he was going, Verma told him that he was going to his friend’s house to return books.

Khurana said that Mishra and Verma had rented the flat in January. Verma started living from the first week of that month, while Mishra moved in a fortnight later in the other room. Yadav started living in Verma’s room from February.