New York, Sep 16 (IANS) Even as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) joined the probe into the murder of a 23-year-old Indian student in St. Louis, Missouri, the body of a male relative of hers was discovered Tuesday in a lake near the park where she was found shot dead.

The body of Soumya Tummala, a 23-year-old electrical engineering student from Andhra Pradesh studying for her masters at Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville, Illinois, was found slumped inside a car Saturday.

Detectives searching the area for clues found the body of Vikram Kumar Tummala, 27, in the lake later, the St Louis Post reported. He, too, died of a bullet wound, police said.

Police said they believe Vikram is related to Soumya, but is not her husband or brother. They lived at different addresses in Maryville, Illinois.

The Ford Taurus car in which Soumya’s body was found was registered in Vikram’s name, police said.

‘Based on the investigation thus far, detectives from the St. Louis County Police Department have narrowed the scope of the investigation to the discovery of these two individuals and believe that this incident involves them alone,’ said St. Louis County Police Officer Rick Eckhard.

‘The investigation still continues as we work with the medical examiner’s office and interview family and friends of the victims.’

Detectives believe Tummala was shot dead between Friday night and Saturday morning. They are trying to find what she was doing in St. Louis and what led to her killing. Police said the FBI joined the case Monday because the body of the Illinois resident was found in another state.

University officials said they were cooperating with the St. Louis authorities to quickly repatriate the body of the student. On Sunday, the university made contact with Tummala’s family in Adilabad district of Andhra Pradesh to break the sad news to her mother.

Vishwas Satpal, the Indian consul general in Chicago, told IANS that the consulate was quickly processing the documentation so that the slain student’s body can be sent to India at the earliest.

Tummala was a student with a very good standing in her department, said Ron Schaefer, director of international programmes at SIU’s Edwardsville campus. She would have graduated in summer 2009.

She is perhaps the first female Indian student murdered in recent memory in the US, leaving aside Minal Panchal, who was one of the 32 victims of a massacre on Virginia Tech campus in April last year.

At least four Indian students have been found murdered in the US since the sensational double murder of A. Kiran Kumar and K. Chandrasekhar Reddy, both Ph.D students from Andhra Pradesh, at Louisiana University in December 2007.

Abhijit Mahato, of Jharkhand, studying for his doctoral degree in engineering at Duke University in North Carolina, was found dead in January 2008. In March, A. Srinivas, a postgraduate medical student from Karimnagar was killed.

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