A 25-year-old journalist with the news channel Headlines Today died under mysterious circumstances while driving back home late Monday night. The police found Soumya Vishwanathan, 25, dead in her car on Nelson Mandela Marg, near Vasant Kunj, with a bullet lodged in her skull.

The police had initially received a call about an accident and found Vishwanathan’s car smashed against the central verge of the road. But a postmortem at AIIMS found a bullet stuck in her right skull (see box). The police said she was shot from a close range; there are conflicting reports whether she was driving at the time.

Police said the incident occurred sometime between 3.10 am — when Vishwanathan last called up home after leaving office at 3.02 am — and 3.55 am, when a rickshaw-puller called the Police Control Room to inform about the incident.

“The murder motive is not clear yet. We are investigating it, and a murder case has been registered,” DCP (Southwest) Shalini Singh said.

The police are still not clear whether it was a case of robbery, personal enmity or road rage.

Abhishek Bhalla, a colleague at Headlines Today, said Vishwanathan left the TV channel’s office at Jhandewalan at 3.02 am after her shift got over. She lived in C-9, Vasant Kunj. “She was looking forward to meeting her sister and brother-in-law who had come down from Vietnam after a long time,” Bhalla said. “She had even taken leave to spend time with them — she was to go on leave from Tuesday.”

According to police, Vishwanathan called up home and spoke with her father at 3.10 am. She told him she would be home in the next 15 or 20 minutes, the police said.

The area’s DCP and ACP were present at the AIIMS trauma centre on Tuesday afternoon and were informed by doctors that a bullet was found stuck in the skull. The windowpanes on the right-hand side were found broken. Officials said Vishwanathan’s belongings were intact in the car.

The police are questioning the rickshaw-puller who called the PCR to get a lead in the case and are also checking the 25-year-old’s call details.

“Soumya always was very enthusiastic about her work and was one of the best persons in the channel’s production unit,” Bhalla said. “She stayed back in office after the blasts in Gujarat and Maharashtra.”

Ashwini George, a family friend and journalist at The Indian Express, said, “Her sister Shubha and Soumya’s brother-in-law had arrived from Vietnam two days ago — she was very close to her sister.”

She was cremated at Lodhi Road crematorium on Tuesday afternoon. A graduate from Kamla Nehru College, Vishwanathan passed out of the Indian Institute of Mass Communication in Dhenkanal in 2004. Her father M K Vishwanathan retired from Voltas company.

Bullet fired from country-made gun?
Police sources said postmortem has found the injury on her skull resulted from a 0.315-calibre bullet. They said a country-made pistol was used in all probability. Sources said they are also investigating the possibility of the journalist being shot inside the car — they feel it was not possible for the wound to have occurred from a bullet outside since the car was moving at a speed of 70 to 80 kilometres per hour when the incident took place.