A missed call behind the love affair & murder in Balrampur

Lucknow: A love affair that began with a missed call ended in murder in Balrampur district.

The body of 20-year-old Ragini, a native of Prayagraj, was found dead in a roadside drain near Singhpur village of Balrampur on July 9.

Her alleged lover, Vinod Kumar, a resident of the same village, was arrested on Saturday and confessed to strangling her after she threatened to implicate him in a rape case for refusing to marry her.

The murder, police said, was not a spur-of-the-moment act but a calculated crime carried out after weeks of tension between the couple. Police said the ill-fated connection began three months ago when Ragini mistakenly dialled Vinod while trying to call her mother. What began as a wrong number soon turned into regular phone conversations, followed by an affair. Vinod confessed during interrogation that Ragini visited him in Balrampur on June 24 and stayed hidden in his house for 15–16 days.

During this period, he learnt that Ragini was already married. Shocked and unwilling to pursue the relationship further, he asked her to return to her family. However, Ragini allegedly refused and threatened to lodge a police complaint accusing him of rape if he didn't agree to marry her. "This threat made me feel cornered," Vinod reportedly told police.

SP, Balrampur, Vikas Kumar, who supervised the probe, said that on July 8, Vinod took Ragini to a Balrampur market on the pretext of an outing. "He bought her clothes and asked her to change into them and drove back. When they reached a secluded stretch near the Jharhar Deeh drain in Singhpur, he stopped the vehicle, pushed her to the ground and strangled her," said the SP.

"To erase evidence, Vinod threw the body in drain and buried her phone wrapped in a plastic sheet. He also buried the clothes she was wearing in a nearby field," the SP said. He added that the breakthrough came when police traced Ragini's call detail records and found Vinod's frequent contact. A team tracked him down before he could flee. Based on his confession, police recovered his motorcycle, Ragini's mobile and clothes.