The 22-year-old regrets not picking up her younger sister’s calls the day before she was murdered. A few days shy of her 19th birthday, her sister had called several times to discuss which laptop she wanted for her birthday.Tired after coming back from work, the woman had fallen asleep. The next day, on Sunday, she woke up late and saw a slew of missed calls from her mother. Her sister was missing.Nearly 24 hours later, her sister’s body would be found inside Sanjay Van in South Delhi’s Mehrauli.“She was so friendly, so gregarious… she made friends with whomever she met. I was always worried she’ll meet the wrong kind of person and get into trouble,” the woman said.In their family’s mind, no one else could have been behind it except one person — an 18-year-old youth, who was later arrested by the Delhi Police.On June 1, the accused called the victim to Sanjay Van. “The girl left home in the morning. Around noon, she called her mother and said she would return shortly…,” DCP (South) Ankit Chauhan had said on Monday.During questioning, police said the accused claimed that it was the girl who first attacked him with a knife, injuring him — he retaliated and stabbed her thrice. “… After killing her, he tried to burn the body. He fled and went to a hospital for treatment… he had sustained minor injuries during the altercation,” the DCP had said.Story continues below this adThe two studied at Delhi University’s School of Open Learning.The girl’s family said the two allegedly met through a common friend at a school farewell party and had begun talking on social media at the beginning of the year. By March, the girl’s sister said, the accused had begun showing controlling tendencies.“He was manipulative and controlling,” she said. “He would try to turn my sister against our family… he even stopped her from talking to her childhood friends from our neighbourhood… he’d keep a track of all her interactions by logging into her social media,” the woman claimed.In April, concerned for her younger daughter’s well-being, the girl’s mother spoke to the boy’s father, asking him to end their children’s friendship. The boy allegedly responded by meeting the mother and attempting to urge her to let him continue talking to her daughter.Story continues below this adThe woman claimed, “He met my mother near the gurdwara (close to our house). When my mother confronted him about his coercive behaviour, he grabbed my mother’s hand and tried to snatch my sister’s phone from her… my sister was there when this happened. The three of them had a shouting match… the youth backed off when my mother threatened to go to the police.”“He used to often threaten my sister with suicide, which would scare both her and my mother,” the woman alleged, explaining that her sister would often give in, fearing that he’d follow through on his threats.The events of June 1On Sunday, the girl would leave home after telling her parents that she was going to Qutub Minar with some friends. “We were in touch with her till 11.30 am… my father had called her because he was facing some issues with our home theatre. She gave him instructions over the phone… and told him she’d be back home by 1.30 pm,” said the woman.An hour after the girl was supposed to come home, her mother received a call from the boy’s father asking where the girl was.Story continues below this adThe woman said, “He told us his son had been beaten up by two of my sister’s friends and had been stabbed. Then we heard someone from behind him say, ‘No, no, [my sister] was stabbed too.’ He then hurriedly told us that the two had met in a park near Qutub Minar and cut the call.”What followed was a blur. The family would rush to Jahangirpuri police station, from where they were redirected to Mehrauli police station. They would then attempt to look for their daughter in the wilderness near Qutub Minar in the heavy rain before making their way to the police station.A missing person’s complaint was filed, and CCTV footage of Sanjay Van’s gates was checked. The boy can be seen entering the forested area at 8.30 am and exiting it in the afternoon. The girl is seen entering the forest at 10 am and never returning.“Police told us to come back the next day,” claimed the woman. “My mother then called the women’s helpline… after some time, the SHO gathered a search team to look for my sister in the forest,” she said, alleging that all this took place around 11 pm.Story continues below this adThe search would continue late into the night, concluding around 3-4 am. The family would be informed of the murder a few hours later, at 10 am.“By the time they found her, animals had eaten away part of her arm… she was completely burnt… and her hair…,” the woman broke down in tears. “She had such beautiful hair, longer than mine… and she’s gone.”Throughout the search, the woman said she had called the boy multiple times, begging him to give them any information. “He refused. He said he didn’t know anything.”Police sources claimed the two had been in a relationship since the beginning of the year, after they began talking on Instagram.Story continues below this ad“On Sunday, they sat and talked about their relationship for almost two hours before he killed her… she had apparently told him that she was betrothed to someone else, which was when the situation escalated,” said a senior police officer.Meanwhile, in a cramped gali in North Delhi, a two-storeyed house remained shuttered to outsiders. “We have nothing to say,” a relative of the boy said coldly, peering from the second-floor balcony.The boy’s neighbours couldn’t believe what he had been accused of. “He was the quietest boy you’d ever see… his eyes were always trained to the ground,” said a grocer.A neighbour, who was also the boy’s senior in school, added, “He was the type who was bullied by the neighbourhood boys… He didn’t have many friends, maybe a couple of them in the locality. He always kept to himself.”