CHENNAI: Nearly four weeks after the dismembered body of a 38-year-old woman was found stuffed in a trolley bag aboard the Tamil Nadu Express at Agra, Guduvanchery police on Saturday arrested a couple in Manipur.
Manik Uddin Laskar (22) and his wife Bhagabati Majhi were arrested at Kashimpur in Jiribam district. Police said the couple would be produced before a magistrate and brought to Chennai on a transit warrant.
Police suspect the murder arose over an alleged relationship between the victim Hayathun Nisha and Manik. The three had worked at the same garment company near the Tambaram MEPZ, sources said.
According to sources, Nisha and Manik had allegedly been in a relationship for around six months and quarrels began after Majhi learnt about it. While there were claims that Nisha was pregnant and that this had led to the fatal confrontation, police have ruled out the pregnancy angle. The exact motive and sequence of events will become clear after the couple is brought to Chennai, police said.
Police suspect Nisha was killed and dismembered at or near the couple’s rented house on Mosque Street in Guduvanchery. Some of her remains were allegedly packed into a red trolley bag and taken to Chennai Central, from where the bag was put aboard the Tamil Nadu Express. Additional body parts were then recovered from a large cooking vessel inside the Guduvanchery house.
The case surfaced on August 5 after passengers noticed a foul smell emanating from the trolley bag in an unreserved coach after the train reached Agra. Railway police opened it and found the headless, dismembered body of a woman, whose identity was then unknown.
CCTV footage subsequently examined by police showed a man and a woman carrying the trolley bag at Chennai Central. Investigators traced the pair to the Guduvanchery house, helping establish the Chennai connection and identify the deceased as Nisha, an Odisha native who had been living in Guduvanchery with her 19-year-old son. Her son, who was staying separately in Mudichur and working as a mechanic, had lodged a missing-person complaint with Guduvanchery police. The case was later altered to murder following the identification of the body.
Manik and Majhi had by then fled Tamil Nadu, prompting police to form special teams to trace them.
Police said the interrogation of the couple would focus on where and how Nisha was killed, their respective roles in the crime, how the body was dismembered and transported to Chennai Central, and the motive behind the killing.