Cops yet to get a lead in 'woman's body in plastic drum' case

Hameed Ashraf | NT

Bengaluru: The city police who inspected a decomposed body of a woman on Monday said that they see a pattern in the crime.

Scanning the CCTV footage around the area, the police procured visuals showing three men arriving near the entrance of the Byappanahalli Railway Station in an autorickshaw and dumping the plastic drum containing the body.

The storage drum with the body was found by the Railway Protection Force (RPF) officials at the main gate of Sir M Visvesvaraya Terminal (SMVT) railway station around 7.40 pm on Monday, after which they alerted the city police.

Speaking to News Trail, the RPF personnel at the terminal said that they became suspicious after noticing a stench coming from the drum next to the automatic sliding door. As the jurisdictional police reached the spot and opened the drum, the body of a woman came out, shocking all the officials present at the scene.

Karnataka Railways Superintendent of Police SK Soumyalatha soon joined the investigation and ascertained the age of the deceased woman to be between 32-35 years. However, the identity is yet to be ascertained by the police. On Tuesday, a team of Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) experts was called to collect forensic and fingerprint samples.

According to sources from the spot, the body was covered with clothes and the storage drum was lidded. As the probe into the case is still underway, SP Soumyalatha said that so far it has been revealed that the body was transported in a train from Machilipatnam by three men who later dumped it near the entrance of the railway station.

On January 4, a decomposed body of a woman around the age of 20 was found in a blue drum wrapped in a polythene cover and abandoned at the end of platform number 1 of the Yeshwanthpur Railway Station. An investigation by police revealed that the body was strangled with a white dupatta and hidden under several clothes.

Last year in the second week of December, another body of a woman was discovered in a yellow plastic bag in one of the unreserved coaches of Byappanahalli MEMU special, which commutes from Bangarapet to Sir M Visvesvaraya Terminal railway station. It was found dumped along with other luggage. In intensifying the probe, the Karnataka police are working with its counterparts in Andhra Pradesh to nab the miscreants.