A 25 year old call centre employee was stabbed to death by her boyfriend in the early hours of Wednesday at Mumbai's Mira Road. Paloma Fernandez,who stayed alone in an apartment at Mira Road,was stabbed after she returned to the apartment after a night shift. The boyfriend,identified as Aquinas Martis (22) subsequently stabbed himself in the abdomen and is undergoing treatment. Though Fernandez succumbed to her injuries on her way to hospital,Aquinas has been admitted to the Bhagwati hospital in Borivali. According to the police,Paloma's debit card had been missing for the last few days and she had accused Aquinas,who was unemployed,of stealing it,leading to a fight between the two. According to the Mira Road police station,where a case of murder has been registered against Aquinas,Paloma had come home from her shift early Wednesday morning and was being escorted to her ground floor flat in Rashmi Hetal Co-op Housing Society,when Aquinas,who stays in a different building in the same complex came out of his hiding place on the parapet above the ground floor entrance and assaulted Paloma with a small kitchen knife. Shailendra Singh,one of the security guards who had come to escort Paloma to her apartment also got injured when he tried to intervene and Aquinas bit him on his index finger. Senior Police Inspector Mukund Mahajan from the Mira Road police station said,"From the statement that Singh and the other guard,Mohan Yadav have given us,after stabbing Paloma in the chest,Aquinas who had chased the injured Paloma out of the building,also stabbed himself in the stomach. The cries of the security guards and Paloma alerted the neighbours who rushed down and took Paloma to the Bhakti Vedanta Hospital,where she succumbed to her injuries on admission. Aquinas is undergoing treatment at Bhagwati Hospital."
