Former beauty queen murdered in Mumbai

Mumbai: The police are still trying to unravel the mystery behind the murder of a 23-year-old former beauty queen and an out-of-work actor in a suburban flat in Mumbai.

Bidushi Dash Barde, originally from Odisha but brought up in Chennai, was found dead in her flat in Manish Garden Building, Andheri West on Monday night when her software engineer husband Kedar Barde, 26, returned from work. He found her lying in a pool of blood with glass shards sticking out of her cheek, jaw, chin and neck.

Kedar left for work in Nariman Point at 7.45am and called Bidushi at 9.30am and got no answer. He called her several times through the day and got no answer.

At 8pm he returned and opened the flat with a duplicate and found the lights were off though the TV was on. He then found his wife lying in a pool of blood in the passageway next to a cupboard. With the help of his landlord, he rushed her to Ambani Hospital where she was declared dead.

At first, Kedar thought that Bidushi, who was a diabetic and complained of dizziness, may have fainted and fallen on the shelf, thus injuring herself. Initially, police filed an accidental case on Monday night but later, considering the nature of her injuries and circumstantial evidence, a case of murder against an unidentified person was registered on Tuesday.

Police have been questioning the security guards, her neighbours and her family for any leads on the murder. According to the watchman, a man is said to have arrived at the flat between 9 and 9.30am and left without making any entry in the visitor register. Another person knocked on the door in the afternoon but got no response.

Police are also checking Bidushi’s mobile phone which had several missed calls and SMSes from model coordinators, directors, producers and some of her relatives. Police suspect the killer could likely be connected to the film industry.

Robbery has been ruled out as the motive since no valuables are missing from the house and there were no signs of forced entry, indicating that the attacker was known to the victim.

Bidushi was Miss Chennai 2006 and had worked in a few Tamil films until she and Kedar fell in love and got married three years back and moved to Mumbai. The couple had been living for the past 15 months in this rented flat in Andheri.