IB official was reserved about her male friend, family learnt about relationship via toll message

The IB official who was found dead on the railway track in Thiruvananthapuram, had not divulged much to her parents about her colleague, who is now being probed by police in connection with her suicide. An SMS notification about the toll collected initiated a conversation between the officer and her parents about this person.

In 2024, her father received a message about the money collected at a toll plaza around midnight in Kochi, and it was then that the family learned about her relationship with an IB official in Kochi. Initially, the family suspected that her car was stolen, and they immediately contacted her. "She said she was on a drive with her friend. She didn't say much or even give his number," said her father. "We thought that she would tell us about marriage sometime later, but she never mentioned it again," he said.

The father bought and gifted the car to her when she joined the Foreigners Regional Registration Office (FRRO) at Pettah in Thiruvananthapuram a year ago. She drove to Ernakulam along with her colleague. The father said that he never spoke to the IB official who was friends with her, and that, because of the nature of their job, She discouraged her parents from contacting him. When asked if he had spoken to his family members, the father said no such conversation had happened.

She came home on holidays and weekends, and her father booked the bus tickets. She came home last time on February 28 and returned on March 1. Her father said she didn't seem depressed then. "It didn't seem like she was going through some kind of a crisis," he said.

The police officials associated with the probe said that she was very reserved and did not maintain any friendships with her roommates. "They didn't even have her phone number. She moved into a new house only a month ago. There were six of them in that house, and nobody knew much about her," the police said.

According to the father, they often spoke to the warden of the hostel at Anayara, where she had stayed before moving to Chackai. The police said earlier that there was no reason for her to go by the railway track as her rented residence was near a private hospital at Chackai, and from the airport, she could easily reach her place without taking the route along the railway track.

She did her schooling after Class 10 in a hostel and then pursued BSc (Hons) - Forensic Sciences at the AMITY University, Noida, Uttar Pradesh. After completing her course, she came home and enrolled in a coaching centre at Pala to prepare for competitive examinations. She cleared the examination and moved to Jodhpur for training, where she became friends with the Malappuram native who had also been recruited that year.

Her family came up with allegations of financial exploitation against her colleague after sourcing her bank statements. Her father said that she never told them about any financial troubles. The family has mailed the bank statements to police. According to cops, the financial transactions were mutual.