NEW DELHI: More than 48 hours after a 24-year-old woman from Mizoram was found dead at her flat in south Delhi’s Munirka area, police are yet to ascertain the cause of death. Her friends have been in detention since the body was discovered with stab injuries on Thursday night.
A medical board, comprising three AIIMS doctors, conducted the postmortem on Saturday noon. As reported by TOI on Saturday, sources confirmed that the doctors cited excessive bleeding from a wound on Juliet Zonunmawi’s thigh as the probable cause of death on the initial examination of the body.
Whether the wounds were self-inflicted or a result of foul play is still to be ascertained. The initial autopsy points to only one injury on the thigh in contradiction to the initial observation by the northeast cell of Delhi Police that she had a “massive head injury”.
Sources said the cops were looking at the suicide angle but a decision would only be taken after the final autopsy report is submitted, according to instructions from the higher-ups in the district.
Juliet’s brother Jeremy was handed over the body on Saturday afternoon from where it was taken to Mizoram House. It will be flown back to her home in Aizwal. Her friends said Jeremy had recently joined the Army as a junior commissioned officer and was posted in Agra.
Her father was a police officer and was posted with the CID of the Mizoram police. He had died three years ago. Her mother stays with parents at their ancestral house.
On Saturday, Union minister of state for home Kiren Rijiju reacted to Delhi Police’s goof—it confused Manipur with Mizoram—and said he would ask the police commissioner to be careful while dealing with NE issues. “I agree our forces needs to be sensitized and well-informed. They need to deal with issues of the people from Northeast with more care,” Rijiju told journalists.
Police commissioner B S Bassi accepted that there were certain problems in coordination. “We are working on the issue and we hope to sort it out soon. We also have some infrastructure problems at Nanakpura cell which are being examined,” Bassi said.
Sources said that Bassi had pulled up joint commissioner Vivek Gogia and DCP Prem Nath for the goof and asked them to be extremely careful while issuing a statement on a sensitive issue.
