Titas Pal, 27, hailed from Kolkata. Neighbours found her hanging from a dupatta tied to a window at Nilgiri Apartments, Anushakti Nagar. The Trombay police said Pal was just back from Kolkata, where she had visited her family. She had celebrated her birthday on Saturday and reported for work on Wednesday.

Pal, an MSc in chemistry from the Calcutta University, joined BARC four years ago as a chemical scientist in the radiochemistry department, a year after an orientation course there. A police official said her family had arranged her marriage, with her consent, to a Kolkata doctor, and a request for a transfer to Kolkata had been granted. “According to her colleagues, she didn’t seem disturbed in any way. As a habit, she would call up her father after returning from work, but she didn’t on Wednesday,” said assistant commissioner of police J Khandagale.

Pal’s father Subrata, an assistant engineer with Calcutta Electric Supply Corporation, got worried when she didn’t respond to his calls from their home in Shyambazar. Pal called up one of his daughter’s colleagues, who went to her room, got no response to knocks on the door, got neighbours to break open the door and found the body, Khandagale said. Subrata Pal arrived Thursday with two relatives at Rajawadi Hospital.

Nothing had happened in the family that could have upset her, they said; she wasn’t under stress at work either. “She really enjoyed her stay with her parents, brother and grandmother. Her father had seen her off when she left for Mumbai,” said a relative.

Police said they haven’t found a suicide note. An official said they would check her cellphone records.