PALAKKAD/KOLLAM: A 42-year-old woman, who went missing from Kottiyam in Kollam on March 17, was found murdered and buried in the compound of a rented house at Manali in Palakkad on Wednesday. Her 34-year-old lover from Perambra in Kozhikode has been arrested. The body of Suchitra, a divorcee, of Naduvilakkara in Kottiyam was exhumed by from a marshy patch near the compound wall of the house, where she had stayed with Prasanth. However, whether the body was that of Suchitra could be ascertained only after the forensic examination as it was in a decomposed state. The crime must have taken place over a month ago. It was the accused Prasanth who informed the police that he had killed Suchitra and buried her there.
Prasanth is a music teacher in a Palakkad school and has been living in this house for the last 11 months. He is married and has a seven-month-old son. Suchitra, a beautician, was a distant relative of Prasanth’s wife. He got introduced to Suchitra during the naming ceremony of his child at his wife’s house. Subsequently, they became intimate through social media. The police said Suchitra, in the course of time, had told Prasanth she wanted to live with him. However, he was not willing to play along out of fear of society.
Sources in the police said the duo got into an altercation on March 20 and Prasanth strangled her to death with the wire of an emergency lamp. He poured petrol on the body and tried to burn it but did not succeed. He then cut her legs from the knees and buried the body in the marshy area attached to the compound wall. A special team led by Kollam Deputy Commissioner of Police Josey Cherian and district Crime Branch DySP P Gopakumar unravelled the mystery behind Suchitra’s disappearance and trapped Prasanth with the cooperation of the police’s cyber cell by tracking the calls made to Suchitra’s mobile phone in the recent months.