CAIRO — An Italian student who was tortured and murdered in Egypt had been detained by police and then transferred to a compound run by Homeland Security the day he vanished, intelligence and police sources say. The claims contradict the official Egyptian account that security services had not arrested him.

Giulio Regeni, a 28-year-old postgraduate student, disappeared on Jan. 25, friends say. His body was found on Feb. 3, dumped on the side of a road outside Cairo. It showed signs of torture, according to forensic and prosecution officials in Egypt.

Egyptian officials have strongly denied any involvement in Regeni’s death. Soon after his body was found, police suggested he was the victim of a car accident. Weeks later they said he might have been killed by a criminal gang impersonating policemen.

But three Egyptian intelligence officials and three police sources independently told Reuters the police had custody of Regeni at some point before he died.

Mohamed Ibrahim, an official in the media department of Homeland Security, said: “There is no connection whatsoever between Regeni and the police or Interior Ministry or Homeland Security. He has never been held in any police station or here.”

Regeni’s fate has re-focused attention on broader allegations of police brutality in Egypt and created tensions between Cairo and Italy, one of Egypt’s most important trading partners.

A senior forensic official told Reuters that Regeni had seven broken ribs, signs of electrocution on his penis, traumatic injuries all over his body, and a brain haemorrhage. He had been killed by a sharp blow to the head.

Pointing to the signs of torture, human rights groups such as the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms and Amnesty International have suggested Regeni may have been killed by Egyptian security services. Rome is demanding Egypt find Regeni’s murderers.

All six intelligence and police sources told Reuters that Regeni was picked up by plainclothes police near the Gamal Abdel Nasser metro station in Cairo on the evening of Jan. 25. Security had been heightened that day because it was the anniversary of the beginning of the 2011 Arab Spring uprising that toppled President Hosni Mubarak.