An associate professor at a national university in Fukui Prefecture was arrested Saturday on suspicion of killing a female graduate student under his tutelage, police said.
Yasunori Maezono, 42, an environmental education specialist at Fukui University's Graduate School of Education, allegedly choked to death Miwa Sugawara, 25, around Thursday in her minicar while it was parked on a road in Katsuyama, police said.
They declined to reveal whether the scientist, who also worked for Katsuyama City Hall as an environmental conservation coordinator, has confessed to the murder.
A specialist in red dragonflies, Maezono was previously a part-time lecturer at Toho University in Kanto where Sugawara is enrolled. Sugawara had taken leave from Toho to work with the suspect.
The police determined it was a murder case after receiving a call Thursday from Maezono's wife reporting that her husband had told her he was taking a woman to the hospital following an accident.