There were blood red African daisies on her bed. And there were impressions of her blood-stained hands on the whitewashed walls of her flat.
There were blood red African daisies on her bed. And there were impressions of her blood-stained hands on the whitewashed walls of her flat.
Both told the chilling story of how Kiran Khanna, 67, was clobbered and throttled in her plush Worli apartment on Monday evening, and left to die.
The victim succumbed to her injuries at Breach Candy Hospital around 3 am on Tuesday. Her husband, Jagdish, 72, is a chartered accountant. Their two sons lived out of town — Ajay, an investment banker in New York, and Atul, a Pune-based entrepreneur.
Khanna and her domestic help, Deepak Baria, 17, were in the third-floor flat at Bhagwan Apartments when the ‘courier boy’ and his companion rang the door bell around 7 pm, said police.
The moment Baria opened the door, the assailants rushed in and rained blows on him. The boy fell unconscious, and the duo attacked Khanna, said police.
One of the attackers clapped a hand on Khanna’s mouth as they dragged her by the hair from the living room to the bedroom.
They throttled her, banged her head on the bedroom wall and clawed her face. With the victim almost unconscious, they pushed her into the bathroom, ransacked the cupboard and fled with jewellery worth at least Rs5 lakh.
Police have detained the domestic help and the two security guards at the building — Srinath Jaiswal and Vinod Gautam — for interrogation. They helped the cops prepare sketches of the accused.
The Khannas had changed three domestic helps in the past two years.”We have taken down details of the domestic helps who worked before Baria. We suspect this to be an insider’s job as the cupboard was not forced open,” said senior inspector Bharat Worlikar.
After the attackers left, a grievously injured Khanna managed to crawl out of the flat and seek help from neighbours. “They have attacked me. I’m dead,” she thrice told Godavari Narang, who lived next door. She managed to mumble her husband’s mobile number before collapsing. Jagdish came home, and with neighbours help, rushed Khanna to Breach Candy Hospital.
The neighbours were surprised that Khanna didn’t cry out for help. “Perhaps, the attackers had mugged her. Had she shouted, we would have heard it,” said a neighbour.
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