KOLKATA/BIRBHUM: After chatting with a Facebook friend for only 15 days, 42-year-old Baguiati homemaker Soma Ghosh agreed to meet him. That proved to be her undoing. The 33-year-old man from Birbhum landed up at her flat and murdered her in a fit of rage on Monday after she rebuffed his advances, police said on Thursday.

Abhishek Majumdar , known as Totla Rana back home due to his stammering, was arrested from Bolpur on Wednesday night and brought to Kolkata. He used the name Nandan Sen on Facebook and was introduced to Soma on the social networking site by a close friend.

Soma and Abhishek began chatting regularly and only seven days later reportedly exchanged phone numbers. Police say Soma invited Abhishek to her home. Accordingly, he landed up at Soma’s Rabindrapally apartment complex around 1pm on Monday and was actually escorted to her flat by a next-door neighbour. Police have two theories on what transpired next. “Both the man and the woman were shocked to find the real human being to be different from the virtual world,” said an investigator. Majumdar is married and has a son. The short, slightly built man had posted the jazzy photo of a biker on his Facebook profile.

“Majumdar desired a ‘closer relationship’, which Soma strongly opposed. She was the mother of a 17-year-old girl. But the youth could not take her rejection and tried to force her. There was a scuffle and she fought back. In a fit of rage, he picked up a belan-chaki and a knife from the kitchen and attacked her. When she fell on the floor unconscious after the beating, Majumdar cut her throat and fled with Soma’s phone as he was afraid that the numerous SMSs exchanged between the two would have led police to him,” said an officer, adding that the murder was not planned. Another theory is that he might have been blackmailing her. Since the family says some gold bangles are missing, police are investigating if Abhishek took them to make it look like a robbery. “He confessed that he killed her in a fit of rage and fled,” said Bidhannagar ADCP Santosh Nimbalkar.

It was Soma’s daughter who found her body after returning from school around 3pm on Monday. Her throat was slit and there were multiple stab wounds on her chest and gashes on her hands, indicating she put up a fight. During investigation, police questioned her husband Sujit Ghosh, a family friend and a neighbour who also had a link in the Facebook chats between Soma and Abhishek. “After interrogating her, we came to know about Soma’s new friendship with Nandan aka Abhishek and started tracking him down,” an officer said.

Police say they got the biggest lead when Soma’s neighbour said he had escorted a man, aged 30-35, to her flat around 1pm that day. Police started looking for this mystery man. The fake name on Facebook did confuse police for some time but it wasn’t long before they zeroed in on him through Soma’s call records. The last call to Soma’s mobile proved to be a crucial lead. When one of Soma’s friends spoke of the victim’s new Facebook friend, investigators put two and two together. They tracked down the mobile from which the last call had been made and landed up at Abhishek’s doorstep on Wednesday night. A quick search yielded Soma’s cellphone.

“After searching the victim’s mobile call list and Facebook account, we got the name of the accused as Nandan Sen. But on tracking the cellphone number, we came to know his real name and residence and picked him up,” an investigator said. “During interrogation, too, he was stammering. We are verifying his statements and checking if there were more persons involved in the murder,” Nimbalkar said.

Abhishek’s father Nando Majumdar works with a local news channel in Bolpur. “Last night a police team from Kolkata came to our house and took away my son for interrogation. I don't know if he was involved in any crime,” Nando told TOI. A team from Bidhannagar Commissionerate made the arrest along with Bolpur police. A Bolpur officer said Abhishek immediately confessed to the crime. He runs a cable TV business in Bolpur and dabbles in insurance.