A 34-year-old woman software engineer was found dead under mysterious circumstances on Friday at a hotel in St Thomas Mount in the city, as per a report in The Times of India.
The deceased has been identified as Swathi Anand.
Police said she may have died of dehydration after consuming excess alcohol.
"We noticed that blood had been oozing from her nose. There were two empty rum bottles in the room, one on a table and the other in a dustbin,” an investigating officer said.
Swathi had checked into the NK Courtyard Hotel, Sripuram Colony, on Friday night.
A police team entered the room at noon on Saturday and found her motionless body.
Police said there were no external injuries and she did not leave a suicide note.
They have ruled out the possibility of murder as there was no sign of assault and enquiries with family members revealed that she had been an alcohol addict for about two years.
Investigators are awaiting an autopsy report from Chromepet Government Hospital.
Swathi was a resident of Nagalkeni near Medavakkam and lived with her husband and two sons, aged 4 and 1.
She had been working in the US for some time before returning to Chennai two years ago and was working with a software firm in Ramapuram.
On Friday night, Swathi had checked into the hotel on Butt road as part of an office conference and had informed her family members about this.
Meanwhile, when housekeeping staff knocked on her door on Saturday and did not elicit a response, they alerted the manager.
After there was no sign of Swathi coming out of the room for a long time, police used a spare key to open the room and found the woman lying unconscious with blood coming out from her nose.
St Thomas Mount police were informed, who rushed to the scene and took the woman to hospital but she was declared brought dead.