Goa: After ‘no foul play’, Russian arrested for compatriot’s murder

PANAJI: Nine days after Russian national Ekaterina Titova, 34, was found dead in a rented room in Oxel, Siolim, Goa police registered the case as a murder after her postmortem confirmed it. Denis Kriuchkoy, also a Russian, was arrested. Goa police had initially ruled out foul play in the case.
Anjuna PI Suraj Gawas said that they suspect that an “attempt to sexual assault” may have led to the murder.
On the same day Titova was found dead, another Russian, Alexandra Ri Djavi, 24, was found hanging in Siolim, and Gawas said it was a “clear suicide”. “There is no foul play in the death of Ri Djavi,” said North Goa SP Shobhit Saxena.
The postmortem on both the bodies was conducted at Goa medical college (GMC) on Friday.
In the Titova case, Gawas said that the victim and another woman had visited Kriuchkoy in Siolim. Kriuchkoy used to live alone at the rented place. He said that investigations revealed that all three were drunk.
“Kriuchkoy committed murder of his friend Titova by compressing her nose and mouth,” Gawas said, adding that Kriuchkoy was non-traceable since August 19 (last Thursday).
On that day, Anjuna police received a phone call from EMRI 108 informing them that a woman was found dead in her rented room at Oxel. “At the spot, we found Titova, lying on the bed inside her bedroom,” Gawas had said.
The PI had said that upon enquiry with her roommate, police learned that both of them consumed alcohol till 5am on Thursday, after which the deceased went to sleep in her bedroom and the friend went to sleep in the hall. “In the late evening, her friend woke up and found that there was no response from the deceased,” he said. “Accordingly, she opened the bedroom door and found her lying on the bed, and there was no movement.”
“This case has been solved through the excellent work done by the doctors of the department of forensics, GMC, and the investigating team of Goa police,” said legal counsel for Russian consulate in Goa, Vikram Varma. “I do hope that we can collectively bring out the truth in the case of Alexandra Ri Djavi too.”