By IANS
New York : A second American teenager has been charged in the January killing of an Indian doctoral student at Duke University in the US, even as the victim’s autopsy report released Friday said he was shot in the forehead while a pillow was held tightly against his face.
Abhijit Mahato, 29, from Jharkhand, was found dead Jan 18 at his apartment in Durham, North Carolina, near the campus. Police said it was a case of robbery and arrested Stephan Oates, 19, a few days later and charged him with Mahato’s killing.
On Thursday, police arrested the second suspect, Laurence Alvin Lovette Jr., 17, in connection with the killing March 5 of University of North Carolina student body president Eve Carson, 22, and found some of Mahato’s possessions, such as a cell phone, with him.
Lovette is charged with first-degree murder of both Mahato and Carson and is being held without bail. The Durham district court judge fixed his bail at $3 million.
He was already facing trial on numerous other charges.
Lovette’s accomplice Demario James Atwate, 21, has already been charged in the murder of Carson, but not in Mahato’s killing.
Carson too is suspected to have fallen victim to a robbery.
The campuses Mahato and Carson studied in are only 10 miles apart.
Mahato was a second year Ph.D. student at Duke’s Pratt School of Engineering. He did his bachelors in engineering from Jadavpur University in Kolkata and M. Tech. from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur.
He worked at GE Global Research Centre in Bangalore for two years before joining Duke about two years ago.