Udyan probe shifts to mystery Arera girl

Bhopal: Armed with an “intimate” photograph, Bengal police are desperately looking for one of Udyan Das’ girlfriends, who was once a resident of Arera Colony in Bhopal. Police want to know if she is alive. What worries them is the way Udyan reacts whenever he is showed her picture — he feels uneasy and start fidgeting, just as he did when confronted with his parents’ pictures in the early days of the investigation.
TOI is withholding the name of the woman. She is seven years older than Udyan and lived near Campion School when the two allegedly were in a relationship, said an officer of Bankura police, who are questioning him for the murders of live-in partner Akansha Sharma and his parents. Police haven’t been able to find any trace of her. She may have been a student of Nutan College.
Investigators were drawn to this woman after seeing an intimate picture of her with Udyan at his house after the discover of Akansha’s tomb. “There were bunches of photographs, but this one leapt out at us,” said an officer.
“When we questioned Udyan about girl, he replied with the same uneasiness that was seen when we interrogated him about his parents (police didn’t know then they were murdered and buried in Raipur). It makes us suspicious. We fear he may have eliminated her as well, but it needs to be investigated and verified,” said a senior officer of Bankura police.
Udyan is talking a lot in custody but not all of it is true, say police, adding that he is always trying to find a way to mislead them. But when they confront her with this girl’s picture, he clams up and starts acting nervous.
All he has said is that he had an affair with her before 2010 and she lived in Arera Colony then. They were in different schools. Asked how they met, he grudgingly said that their mothers were colleagues in the statistics and planning department in MP.
An investigating officer said, “His uneasiness makes us suspicious. He is ready to answer a lot of things but when we start questioning him about this girl, he starts behaving weird. When I interrogated him in Bhopal about the whereabouts of his parents, he reacted exactly the same way. We need to find out if she is alive or not to clear our suspicion.” Udyan claims he broke up with her in 2010 and doesn’t know her whereabouts. He also claims her brother was a friend of his.
On the Akansha probe, Udyan has told police that he used flight scanners to gather information about flights between New York and Delhi. This is how he used to keep up the charade about flying to the US. “The flight time from New York to Delhi is more or less the same as a train journey from Bhopal to Delhi. He used to tell her he was on a flight. After reaching Delhi he used to stay in Ajanta Hotel where he used to meet Akansha,” said a source.
Asked why he went to Bankura to meet her parents in October last year when he had already killed and entombed Akansha, he claimed it was out of guilt. But when asked why he called them to Bhopal on January 22, he clammed up. “We need to find out why he invited her parents to his home in Bhopal. He had told them that Akansha will be flying down from New York and will meet them in Bhopal. She was dead. What was his intention?”