Pune Crime Files: Over 7 years after murder of software engineer Antara Das, family asks if she will get justice

Satyendra Sinha, who was passing by, saw Das lying in a pool of blood and rushed her to a private hospital, where she died. Later, Sinha lodged a complaint of murder at the Dehu Road Police Station, which was then under the Pune rural police jurisdiction, and is now a part of Pimpri Chinchwad police.

On December 28, police arrested an IT professional Santoshkumar Gupta (then 24 years old) from Bengaluru, suspecting his role in Das’s murder. He was booked under sections 302 (murder), 120 (b), and 23 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

The police said a resident of West Bengal, Das went to Bengaluru in 2015 for advanced training in software engineering, where she was introduced to Gupta. She later came to Pune where she joined Capgemini in April 2016 and started living as a paying guest in the Nigdi Pradhikaran area of the city.

Das’s family told the police she was allegedly harassed by Gupta, after which she had blocked his number on her phone. The police arrested him on suspicion, but a probe revealed Gupta was in Bengaluru on the day of the murder.

Also, the last communication between Das and Gupta was at least six to seven months before she was killed. His previous call records and his locations did not lead the police to any concrete clue about the murder. The police also probed the possibility of whether he had hired anyone to kill Das, but found nothing. Without any evidence, the police could not file a charge sheet against him in the stipulated time of 90 days. A court released Gupta on bail in March 2017.

Starting a fresh probe into Das’s murder case in August 2017, the Pune rural police announced a reward of Rs 25,000 for information about her killers. But once again they failed to get any clue about her murderer.

In July 2018, the police submitted to the court as per Section 169 (Release of accused when evidence is deficient) of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) to drop all charges against Gupta, the only person they had arrested in this case.

Advocate Rajendra Gade, who represented Gupta before the court, said, “Gupta was innocent and still he had to be in jail for a few months. He suffered a lot in this case”.

When contacted, Das’s father Debananda Das, who is based in West Bengal, said he has not received any information or update from the police about his daughter’s murder case for a long time now. “We still do not know who killed Antara. We do not know whether she will ever get justice,” he said.