Solving Crime: How a jewellery pouch tucked in a travel bag beside severed head helped Vasai-Virar police crack woman’s murder

They found no immediate clues to identify the deceased, merely based on the severed head and presence of bindi and long hair, as they were left with no trace of the rest of her body. The FIR was registered against unknown people, and the police suspected an attempt to destroy evidence since only the head had been recovered along with the suitcase and white gunny bag.

For several hours, the case seemed to go nowhere, until the officers inspected the travelling bag and found a small jewellery pouch tucked in one corner. It was this small but decisive clue that eventually led the police to reveal the identity of the deceased woman and the suspected killer.

The seemingly ordinary empty pouch, left behind in haste or by mistake by the suspect, bore the contact details of a jewellery shop in Naihati, West Bengal. This led the Mira Bhayandar Vasai Virar (MBVV) police to contact the shop owner, who shared the list of outstation customers. One of the phone numbers was traced to a Nalasopara address and was switched off.

The local police station in Naihati, West Bengal, also assisted in obtaining the details of a woman customer who frequently visited the jewellery shop in her hometown.

When the MBVV police followed up and coordinated with the local police in Naihati, they obtained details of a customer named Utpala, also known as Soma Das, who would regularly visit the jewellery shop in her hometown. Her relatives revealed that she was married and lived near Mumbai, but had been missing for nearly two months.

Switched-off phone number, scooter provide subsequent clues

The MBVV police crime branch then focused their search in Nalasopara and traced records of the switched-off number, which led them to a man who, according to his friend, had recently bought a scooter.

The police then trailed the scooter registration at the Vasai Regional Transport Office (RTO) and found it to be parked at a building in Nalasopara (East) and located the flat of its owner, Harish Basavraj Hipparagi, 49, Utapala’s husband.

The police arrested him on the night of March 14, just 24 hours after the discovery was made. He was booked for offences punishable under sections 103 (1) (murder) and 238 (causing disappearance of evidence) of the Bhartiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS).

Tiff over son’s name change

According to the police, Hipparigi’s interrogation revealed that the couple, who had been married for over two decades, worked together making imitation jewellery. On January 8, this year, an alleged altercation occurred over Utpala’s reluctance to change the last name of her son from her previous marriage and over her planned trip to her hometown on January 10.

Hippargi allegedly strangled her to death and packed her body in a gunny bag, carried it on his scooter along with an empty suitcase and a machete to a desolate spot and dismembered it.

He allegedly dumped the torso in the drain and the head wrapped in a gunny bag left inside a suitcase, which he, as per the police, left abandoned in the thick bushy area near Virar Phata, where it was found two months later.

After his arrest, Hippargi was remanded to the Mandavi police station for further probe. On September 17, the case was transferred from the magistrate to the sessions court, and the trial in the case is yet to begin.

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