BENGALURU: A 28-year-old woman’s decomposed body was found at a vacant site in Agrahara Layout on September 2. The police identified the victim after a clothing tag found on her body led them to a shopping mall in Odisha. Further investigation helped the police trace and arrest her husband, who allegedly killed her over a domestic dispute on August 11 and kept her body at their rented house for three days before dumping it at the vacant site.
The accused has been identified as Sagar Chandra Rawat (31), who works at a hotel. He had married the deceased, Anusuya Behara, a homemaker, a few months ago. The couple had recently come to Bengaluru and were staying in a rented house in Agrahara Layout.
According to the police, on September 2, the owner of the vacant property had arranged for the site to be cleaned as part of the Greater Bengaluru Authority’s (GBA) vacant-site clean-up drive under the Freedom from Waste campaign. During the cleaning, workers found a body wrapped in a bed and tied with rope.
The owner alerted the police. The police inspected the site and sent the body for postmortem examination. Identifying the victim was a challenge as the body was highly decomposed, and the police initially suspected that she could have been killed about a month earlier.
There were no missing-person complaints involving women registered at the jurisdictional police stations.
The police made inquiries at nearby hostels and paying guest accommodations, but these did not yield any leads. However, a clothing tag found on the deceased’s clothes helped the police trace the garment to a shopping mall in Bhubaneswar, Odisha.
During questioning, Rawat confessed to killing Anusuya by strangling her on the night of August 11. He kept her body at their rented house for three days while deciding what to do next. On the early morning of August 15, Rawat allegedly wrapped his wife’s body in a bed sheet, tied it with rope and dumped it at the vacant site. He then vacated the rented house and started staying at the hotel where he worked, the police said.
