Man held for Indian student’s murder in UK

Jyotirmayee found dead at her home near Birmingham

LONDON: A 24-year-old man has been arrested in connection with the murder of Indian student Jyotirmayee Nagasaibabu killed on Tuesday night.

The West Midlands Police who are investigating the brutal murder refused to release any more information about the man arrested. The 23-year-old woman’s body was found at her home in Montague Road in Handsworth, an Asian dominated suburb of Birmingham where Jyotirmayee was sharing a house with four other students from Andhra Pradesh.

Police said that a post-mortem has been carried out and it is found that Jyotirmayee died of head injuries. The police, who are leading the inquiry into the murder, refused to give any more details until he was formally identified.

Another male Indian student who was at the house at the time of the incident and sustained serious injuries was in hospital and said to be out of danger. The police refused to identify him.

Jyotirmayee was pursuing an MPH (Master of Public Health) course at the University of Wolverhampton. The elder daughter of the Nagasaibaba completed bachelors in physio-therapy from Vijaya Institute of Medical Sciences in Vijayawada and came to Birmingham in September 2007 to pursue her Masters course.

While the police are tight-lipped about any details of the case it is believed that the motive for the attack seems to have been burglary.

Meanwhile, Jyotirmayee  is the fourth student from Andhra Pradesh to be killed abroad in attacks by unidentified people in the past six months.

The spate of killings has left parents worried about the safety of their children studying abroad.
 
“We had sent her with big dreams only eight months ago but never imagined that her body would return home,” said Jyotirmayee’s father Nagasaibaba.

The father received a phone call from Jyotirmayee’s friends who told him that she was murdered by unidentified people who broke into the house she was sharing with two other women. Except for the phone call, Nagasaibaba has not received any information about the incident or the cause of the murder either from the university or the Indian mission. Jyotirmayee’s sister Deepti Priya is a third-year engineering student in Vijayawada.

—With Agencies