Youth held for killing room-mate in Bhubaneswar

BHUBANESWAR: A 19-year-old youth was arrested on Sunday for allegedly stabbing his room-mate to death before stuffing his body in a carton and dumping it on the field outside the

horticulture

office near Rental Colony market. Nayapalli Police, who arrested Prakash

Jena

for the alleged incident, claimed the murder was triggered by the deceased's refusal to lend some money to the accused.

The deceased has been identified as Dilip Sahoo (41). He would share a room on rent with Jena. Both used to work in a flour mill near Rental Colony market and lived close by.

Police said Sahoo had taken Rs 10,000 as advance from his employer on Saturday evening to purchase a saree, fruits and other household items for Sabitri Amabasya, which falls on Monday.

"Our investigation revealed that the accused and the deceased got into an altercation when Jena asked Sahoo for some money out of the advance he had taken. When Sahoo refused, Jena attacked him with a knife," commissioner of police Satyajit Mohanty said.

Police claimed that Jena then got hold of a carton and stuffed Sahoo's body in it. Jena went to the terrace and dumped the body in the field outside the horticulture office. Police came to know about the incident after some locals spotted the body outside the field on Sunday morning.

Jena's role came under the scanner as he was

untraceable

since Sunday morning. Police later traced him to a place near Pahala, on the city's outskirts. "The flour mill owner Pramod Subudhi and other workers told us that Jena and Sahoo were sharing a room. When Jena was nowhere to be found, we started searching for him. We nabbed him from Bhubaneswar's outskirts while he was preparing to escape," another police officer said. Police added that Jena had confessed to his crime.