A 17-year-old girl was brutally murdered by her alleged boyfriend on Monday afternoon in Karrahi Bazar, Barra. The victim was a class 12 student at a school in Naubasta, informed police.

The accused, identified as 23-year-old Shivam Varma, a resident of Fatehpur and an employee at a nursing home in the Karrahi Bazar area, reportedly used surgical blades to nearly behead the victim. After committing the crime, Varma called the victim’s friend and confessed to the murder. The friend immediately informed the victim’s father, who then alerted the police, informed Ashish Shrivastava, deputy commissioner of police (DCP) Kanpur South.

An FIR has been registered against Shivam Varma, and multiple police teams are conducting raids to arrest him, he added.

According to the victim’s friend, Varma met the victim in Karrahi main market while she was accompanied by her friend. He asked the victim to go with him, and she instructed her friend to return home, assuring her that she would be back by 3 pm.

An hour later, the friend received a call from an unknown number. The caller, identifying himself as Shivam Varma, confessed to murdering the victim by slitting her throat and stated that her body was still in his rented room.

The friend immediately informed the victim’s father, and they rushed to Varma’s room, however, it was locked. The father then alerted the police, who broke open the door and discovered the victim’s body, with a deep cut on the neck and severe gashes on the face, on a mattress.

Additional DCP Mahesh Kumar, who visited the crime scene with forensic experts, stated that surgical blades were likely used to inflict the injuries. The police have seized the victim’s mobile phone, and the last call she received was from a contact named ‘Roxxy’.

The landlord’s son, Sandeep Kumar, revealed that Varma frequently brought girls to his room and had been confronted multiple times about his behaviour, but he refused to change.

The victim’s father expressed his suspicion that his daughter was murdered for resisting Varma’s alleged attempts to push her into the flesh trade. “After coming here and speaking to people, I strongly suspect that a flesh trade racket is operating in this area, and my daughter was killed for this very reason,” he said.

However, the additional DCP Kumar said that the investigation is in initial stages and is currently underway. The accused will be arrested soon.