On Sunday night, she was shot in an Andheri hotel room, possibly in her sleep. She was found dead on Monday afternoon in room number 202 of Sun-N-Shine. Police said she had two bullet wounds, one in the temple and another in the neck. They found two empty glasses, one of them with bloodstains, a bottle of 8 PM whisky and a pistol in the room.

Police said the killer probably used a pillow — they found one with two bullet holes — to muffle the gunshots, and turned up the volume of the TV.

Kaushambi had checked into the hotel on May 12 with a man called Manish Thakur and they had signed in as Mr and Mrs Thakur.

Police say Layek, an assistant systems engineer with Tata Consultancy Services, was murdered by Thakur, an engineer with the Navy. He was detained last night in Goa. They suspect she was murdered because Thakur did not want his wife to know about his relationship with Kaushambi.

“Thakur was married but he still had a relationship with Kaushambi. He had told her family members that he would get a divorce and marry Kaushambi. We suspect that Thakur might not have told his wife about his relationship with Kaushambi which could have created tension between them,” J J Naiknavare, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Zone X), said. “We do not say this could be the motive behind the murder as we are still to question Thakur.”

Police say that Kaushambi did not know that Thakur was married when they first met.

The murder, police say, was well-planned. “It does not seem to have been committed on the spur of the moment, the accused had two weapons with him,” said Pradeep Sonawane, senior police inspector at Andheri. The police are still looking for Kaushambi’s mobile phone which they suspect Thakur might have taken away. The telephone records they accessed show they were in constant touch with each other through calls and text messages.

A Navy spokesperson said that Thakur was based in Kochi till February 10 but was sent for technical training to Goa. Asked about the weapon Thakur was carrying, he said: “The Navy arms room would have weapons like .9mm and .38 mm pistols but it is very difficult for anyone to smuggle them out.”

Navy authorities have asked the police to show the evidence they have against Thakur. The police expect to bring Thakur to Mumbai tomorrow.

Kaushambi’s friends and colleagues in Mumbai say they haven’t met Thakur, a 28-year-old aircraft maintenance engineer. But some of them had encounters with him in cyberspace. Rohit Monga, who works with TCS, said: “Thakur had once scrapped on my Orkut account saying that he is Kaushambi’s friend. I would not like to say anything more as I am in a state of shock.”

But her relatives refuse to believe she was in love with Thakur. Kaushik Layek, Kaushambi’s cousin and an assistant director in the Mumbai film industry, said: “She was not the kind who would go out with a person like Thakur. This person (Thakur) is a psycho and he must have been stalking her.”

Family members say Kaushambi had gone to Dumka just a fortnight ago but did not mention Thakur though she was asked about her marriage plans. Kaushambi had gone for the house-warming ceremony of their small single-storey house in Dumka where her mother, Ranjana Devi, runs a typewriting institute.

Devi lost her husband five years ago. Her son Sonak, a commerce graduate, is unemployed. The daughter had started sharing the burden of running the house in 2005 when she got a job with TCS after she completed her MCA from BIT (Mesra).