A woman in her 60s was killed on Monday night in what seems to be a robbery attempt at the Kusum Vihar locality of Dhanbad, leading the police to launch a probe into the incident.

Sheela Sinha, wife of a retired Sub Divisional officer of BSNL, used to live alone at her double-storeyed house. Her son lives in Patna, while her daughter stays in Bhilai with their families.

The team of cops, led by Senior Superintendent of Police Aseem Vikrant Minz reached at the site late on Monday night and took details from the tenants who live on the ground floor of the house where the incident took place. The team also collected some evidence from the site.

The two tenants, Rajkumar Singh and Dilip Kumar, said they didn’t get any information about the incident and only got to know about it when the deceased’s son Sumit Sinha called Dilip after not getting any response from his mother for a long time.

Dilip said that when he went upstairs, he found that Sinha’s room was closed. She did not elicit any response despite knocking on the door and shouting repeatedly.

He then found the lock of the door open and went inside to find the victim lying dead on the floor and her almirah open with several articles lying here and there.

On Sumit’s instruction, Dilip then called the local police as well as the SSP, after which a team arrived.

Talking about the incident, SSP Minz said, “It seems the woman was killed during a robbery attempt where she was strangled from behind by the culprits. However, since she did not have a huge amount of money at her home, we are also looking into other aspects of the incident.”

Aparna Singh, wife of tenant Rajkumar Singh, revealed that she had seen the victim talking over phone with someone at around 9 am, while she was locking the door.