BENGALURU: In yet another shocking incident within Bengaluru Railway Division, the body of a woman, in her 30s, was found dumped on the premises of the posh Sir M Visvesvaraya Terminal (SMVT) at Baiyappanahalli here on Monday night.
This is the third such case in the past four months, and raises serious questions about security at the railway stations in the division. However, N Shashi Kumar, DIG Railways, ruled out any ‘serial killer’ theory.
CCTV footage revealed that three men arrived in an autorickshaw in the early hours of Monday (12.16 am), dumped the drum and fled. The men have reportedly been identified. “Some suspects have reportedly been detained after CCTV cameras captured images of three men carting the body in an auto rickshaw and keeping it inside the railway station. They are being questioned,” informed sources told TNIE.
According to a source, the body was found inside the 2-ft drum around 7.30 pm, when Railway Protection Force (RPF) personnel opened it after getting suspicious. “The drum was noticed by a cop by 2pm Monday. Many long-distance commuters use such drums to carry luggage.
So we assumed it to be someone’s baggage. However, the drum remained at the same spot till 7.30 pm, and the RPF opened it. The foul smell made them realise it was a corpse, and they alerted the Government Railway Police (GRP).
Previous two cases still in cold storage
“Our team rushed to the spot after RPF alerted us and found the body inside the drum, covered with clothes. We alerted the forensics and fingerprints teams. It looks like the woman, aged between 31 and 35, was murdered and the accused attempted to dispose of the body,” GRP Superintendent S K Soumyalatha told TNIE. The GRP registered a case.
“The victim may have been murdered a day before the body was found. Prima facie, there were no marks of external injury on the body of the deceased. Postmortem details are, however, awaited,” added sources, on condition of anonymity. The body was sent to Victoria Hospital for postmortem. This is the third such incident, and the previous two cases are yet to be cracked.
On January 4, the body of a woman was found in a 4-ft drum by a housekeeping staffer on Platform 1 of Yesvantpur Railway Station, in a highly decomposed state. On December 6, the body of a woman in her early 30s was found in a sack under a berth, in an unreserved coach of a train. The DIG said, “We are close to cracking the SMVT case.
The previous two murders were committed elsewhere and the bodies brought to Bengaluru.” The GRP SP said, “We tried our best to crack them. There were no missing complaints related to them, which made it very difficult to crack them. We visited some villages enroute, circulated photos and spoke to people there, but could not achieve any breakthrough.”
“Police have ruled out these cases as serial killings. In all three cases, the victims were killed elsewhere and dumped inside the train or at the stations for easy and anonymous disposal. The modus operandi of disposal of the bodies in the two cases is similar, along with the finding that the victims were not subjected to sexual assault. In the earlier case, the body was transported in the train.
The murder must have taken place somewhere outside the city at least a week to 10 days before the body was found. It was highly decomposed with the skin peeling off. The victim, aged between 30-32 years, was strangled to death,” said sources. “In both cases, the criminals have used crowded stations to dispose of the body to maintain anonymity.
A lot of fish and other marine life and products are transported via trains. The smell is overpowering. At Yesvantpur station, the smell of the decomposed body was earlier mistaken for fish until it became distinctly foul,” said sources.