Highly-decomposed body of a 30-year-old woman was found inside a bed-box at her rented flat in southwest Delhi’s Sevak Park, near Bindapur, on Wednesday morning.
Highly-decomposed body of a 30-year-old woman was found inside a bed-box at her rented flat in southwest Delhi’s Sevak Park, near Bindapur, on Wednesday morning. The police did not rule out sexual assault on the woman before the murder.
The body was putrefied to such an extent that it became impossible for the police to ascertain whether the body was that of a female or a male. It was the owner of the building who told the police that the body was of his tenant, Dimpal Verma, a woman who lived alone in the flat and worked in a private company.
Senior police officers suspect that the woman was murdered almost a week ago and her killer(s), yet to be identified, stuffed her body inside the bed-box before locking the main gate of the flat from outside. Though the bed-box was covered with a mattress, the assailant(s) had deliberately put extra clothes, blankets and bed-sheets on the bed to avoid any foul smell emanating from inside the bed.
Surender Kumar, deputy commissioner of police (south-west), said the crime came to light on Wednesday morning after the woman’s landlord, Shyam Sunder, called the police control room and said some foul smell was coming from his tenant’s room.
A police team reached the house and learnt that his neighbours had been complaining about some bad smell since Tuesday. The police personnel broke open the main door and entered the flat. They soon realised that the smell was emanating from a room that was rented out to the woman around two months ago.
The team members went inside the room and opened the bed-box in which the woman’s highly decomposed body was found. The body was sent for an autopsy at a government hospital mortuary, said Mr Kumar.
Some documents found in her i10 car parked outside her accommodation revealed that she had shifted her residence at least four times in the last couple of years. One of the documents also carried the picture of a little girl beside her photo, prompting the investigators to believe she is a mother of a child.
“We have registered a case of murder and investigations are underway. The case is being probed from all angles,” he said, adding that the exact cause of death is yet to be ascertained.
“The body was so badly rotten that it was not possible to find any injury or ligature marks on it. It could be strangulation or smothering,” Mr Kumar said.
According to police, the lane in which the murder took place did not have any CCTV camera. Also, nobody saw anybody entering or leaving the flat in the last one week. Even the landlord was not familiar with the persons who visited her after she became his tenant.
The woman had provided some documents to her landlord while taking the room on rent. One of the documents mentioned an address in South Delhi’s Mehrauli. Investigators visited the area and found that no such address existed.
“We don’t have details about the woman’s family background and her past. Nobody knows which place in India she belonged to and where her family members are. It’s a blind murder case,” said Mr Kumar.
