A 35-year-old woman from Odisha was allegedly hacked to death by her husband’s friend in Bengaluru on Monday after she refused to give Rs25,000 to the debt-ridden man.The deceased was identified as Prachi Das and the accused as Basudev Jena (35), a native of Jagarstingpur.
According to reports, Jena walked into Prachi’s flat at around 3 pm and asked for Rs25,000. When she expressed her inability to pay the amount, Basudev allegedly tried to snatch her mangalsutra. When Prachi screamed for help, Basudev slit her throat with a kitchen knife.
Upon hearing the screams and noise of utensils, the landlady, Saraswathi, who was living on the ground floor in the same building, rushed to her help. While she was climbing the stairs, she saw Basudev in a blood-stained shirt and with a knife in his hand rushing out of Prachi’s house in a hurry.
The panicked lady raised an alarm following which colony people came out and apprehended Basudev and handed him over to the police. The police have booked Jena under IPC Section 302 (murder).
Basudev was working with an IT firm Mindtree Consulting and was a close friend of victim’s husband, Debashish Das (35), a software engineer at the Wipro. Basudev and the Das couple were living in the same building in Domlur.
During interrogation, Basudev said the owner had threatened to evict him if he did not pay his dues. He needed Rs25,000 urgently to clear his outstanding rent dues.“Basudev had borrowed money from Debashish earlier also. He claimed he did not go to their house to kill Prachi and it just happened,” police said.