The Mancheswar police have started investigation into the suicide of a woman research scholar of the Institute of Minerals and Materials Technology (IMMT) during a video call with her friend late on Tuesday night here.
The police have summoned one Chirantan Samantaray, friend of the 34-year-old woman identified as Subhalaxmi Acharya, for questioning as he was the first person to inform the police about the incident over phone from Nagpur.
Samantaray called up the Mancheswar police station on Tuesday night at around 11.30 pm and told that his friend attempted suicide by hanging herself while she was on a video call with him.
The police rushed to the woman’s house on the second floor of the building and found her hanging from a ceiling fan with her mobile phone kept at a distance near a window.
The woman had separated from her husband and was living in a rented house at Bhagwat Sandhan Phase-II near Rasulgarh. She had married since past 11 years and separated from her husband four years ago over marital discord. Post her MTech, she was working as a senior project fellow at the IMMT since March 2013.
Meanwhile, her family members alleged foul play, saying she was murdered. “We demand a thorough probe. We suspect that she was murdered,” said a relative of the deceased.