Nameless in death,probe at dead-end

Investigations led police to the courier company’s office in Lahori Gate,North Delhi,from where the box was dispatched. A grainy CCTV footage recovered from the office showed a man getting off a cycle-rickshaw to drop the wooden box. “The man had booked the parcel on April 2. In the sender’s column,he wrote ‘B’ and the recipient was marked ‘self’,” an officer said. More than 1,000 rickshaw-pullers were questioned,but police got no lead.

June 9,Jute Sack

The naked body of a woman in her twenties was found stuffed in a jute bag,which was left among the bushes near a garbage dump in Usmanpur,Northeast Delhi.

There were several injury marks on the body,which was kept at Guru Teg Bahadur mortuary and was later cremated. Initially,police suspected that the woman might have been raped,but a post-mortem ruled that out.

Ten days before the body was found,police had received a missing person complaint. The description seemed to match that of the body. The trail,however,went cold. The woman is still to be identified.

Dec 18,Rolled in Mattress

In Usmanpur again,the body of a middle-aged woman was found wrapped in a cotton mattress. There were no external injury marks on the body. Police suspect the woman was strangled.

She was wearing a pair of jeans and four layers of clothing,including woollens. So far,police have ruled out robbery as the motive,because her gold earrings and ring were intact. Police suspect that this could have been a case of personal enmity.

Dec 8,Hacked in Two

Two bags were found,4 kilometres apart,in Southwest Delhi. While one bag contained the torso of a woman,the other had the rest of the body. The first bag,with the torso,was found near Naraina flyover,the second near Janak Vihar in Todapur.

Police are yet to establish the identity of the woman. Police say the fact that the body was mutilated indicates that the murder was committed in a fit of rage. Cutting the body in two,and disposing it at separate locations,was meant to prevent identification and prolong the probe. “It seems like the murderer sought revenge. The body has no lacerated wound,” said A K Ojha,DCP (Southwest).

April 29,Travel Bag

The body of a girl from Myanmar was found in a travel bag at a rented accommodation in Uttam Nagar. A month later,her male companion,Innocent Nwayo,a Nigerian national,was arrested for the murder. Police say Nwayo and the girl had an argument and he strangled her. Leaving her in a bag at home,the 31-year-old then fled to Mumbai. He returned to Delhi a few days later,hoping things would have settled down by then. He was arrested.

October 29,Body Burnt

Twenty-seven-year-old Niranjani Pillay was murdered,allegedly by her husband,Sumit Handa (31),who packed the body in a bag and took it to Rai in Haryana. He burnt the body there and returned home. Handa reportedly told police that he strangled Pillay with a laptop charger cord after he saw her chatting over the webcam with a man based in South Africa.