Dehradun:

A Lieutenant Colonel in the Army posted at Uttarakhand’s Dehradun has been arrested for murdering a Nepali woman whom he had spotted at a dance bar in West Bengal’s Siliguri and brought along to the hill state, Dehradun police said, adding that they solved the murder within 24 hours after finding a body of a woman in a suspicious condition in the Sirwal Garh locality on Monday.

The woman was from Nepal and lived in Siliguri, the police found out in their investigation.

Ramendu Upadhyay, posted at Clement Town cantonment area, allegedly killed the 30-year-old woman with whom he was in an extramarital relationship after she started pressuring him to marry her, police said. He was arrested from his house in Panditwari Prem Nagar.

The victim, Shreya Sharma, had met the accused at a dance bar in Siliguri, after which their affair continued for three years. When he was transferred to Dehradun, he brought Shreya with him to Dehradun where he took a flat on rent for her, he confessed during interrogation, police said.

Upadhyay had alcohol with the woman at a club on Rajpur Road on Saturday night and offered to take her on a long drive to which she agreed. However, after reaching Thano Road, a desolate place on the outskirts of the city,  at around 1:30 am, he parked the car and hit the woman repeatedly on the head with a hammer until she died, police said. After killing Shreya, Upadhyay dumped her body along the roadside and drove away, they said, adding that the army officer was already married and was under pressure from the woman to marry her.