MUMBAI: After evading the city police for the past year, Bhulabhai Desai Road resident Kamlesh Agarwal (22) was arrested by the crime branch team on Friday for allegedly murdering his niece, Deepa Agarwal (20), in Florida in July last year. He was apprehended from a hotel in south Mumbai.

The case has had dramatic overtones, with the sister of the murdered girl, Sheela Agarwal, posting a website to lobby with senior U.S. state department officials to expedite the trial of the accused. Last Sunday, almost a year after the murder, Sheela led a rally to Washington D.C. to ``push for justice'', according to an e-mail interview with this paper. Kamlesh will now be handed over to Interpol and later to the police in the U.S. who are investigating the case.

It may be recalled that Deepa, a Ph.D student of finance at the University of Central Florida, was murdered, allegedly by Kamlesh, on July 11 last year. Kamlesh lived in an adjacent flat and was found missing from the day of themurder.

According to crime branch inspector Vasant Tajne, Kamlesh had escaped to India immediately after the murder. ``Interpol had alerted the Mumbai police since Kamlesh hails from the Warden Road area and has relatives and friends residing in Mumbai,'' Mr Tajne stated.

The police had kept a vigil at the residence of his relatives and friends for the past year. Finally, on Friday afternoon, a police team under the supervision of deputy commissioner (crime) Pradeep Sawant managed to arrest him from a south Mumbai hotel.

Kamlesh allegedly killed Deepa when she was alone in her flat last July. Deepa's NRI father, Mangi Agarwal, was then in India on vacation. Mr Agarwal tried persistently to talk to his daughter over the phone. When he could not contact her for over four days, he alerted the Florida police. They broke into the flat and discovered Deepa's body in a cardboard box, kept in the closet of her bedroom. She had been bludgeoned with a blunt object.

Following a directive from Interpol last year, the Mumbai crime branch had sought the metropolitan court's permission to question the friends and family members of Kamlesh. The police had even sent a team to his native place in Bihar, but were clueless about his whereabouts.

According to the police, Kamlesh hailed from an influential family and was pursuing a B.S. in computer science in the U.S. When this newspaper had earlier contacted his elder brother, Jugal Kishore Agarwal, the latter said he was unaware about Kamlesh's whereabouts. ``But we are ready to co-operate with the Mumbai police,'' he had stated.

Deepa's father, Mangi Agarwal, appears to be satisfied with the investigations conducted by the Mumbai crime branch. ``Kamlesh deserves no pardon despite being my cousin. After all, he has brutally killed my daughter.'' Had she continued her studies, Deepa would have been the youngest Ph.D from her university, Mr Agarwal said. According to Sheela, thousands of people have responded to the website, including some of Kamlesh's friends, who were ``surprised but sympathetic'', she said.