Clothing tag helps Bengaluru police crack murder of woman found in vacant site

Bengaluru police have arrested a 32-year-old man in connection with the alleged murder of his wife, whose highly decomposed body was recovered from a vacant site in Agrahara Layout, in northeast Bengaluru's M.S. Nagar, on September 2.

The accused, Sagar Chandra Rawat, is alleged to have strangled his wife, Anusuya Behara, 28, during an argument over a financial matter at their rented house near Sampigehalli on August 11.

According to the police, Rawat kept the body in the house for three days while he considered how to dispose of it. On August 16, at around 3 a.m., he allegedly wrapped the body in a bed, tied it with a rope and left it at a vacant site close to his home, choosing the spot because of the thick vegetation there. He then vacated the house and moved to the hotel where he worked, the police said.

The owner of the site alerted the police, who reached the spot around 7 p.m. A preliminary investigation indicated that the woman had been murdered about a month earlier and her body dumped at the site.

Identifying the deceased proved difficult because the body had been decomposing for nearly a month. Special teams were formed and inquiries were made at nearby paying guest accommodations and hotels, but these yielded no leads, an investigator said.

Investigators photographed the clothes on the body, a pendant around her neck and a pair of bangles on her hand. The breakthrough came when they found a tag on her clothing, which they traced to a shopping complex in Bhubaneswar. By scanning the tag and gathering details of where the garment had been sold, the police established the woman's identity and arrested Rawat.

The couple had married a few months earlier and had come to Bengaluru to earn a living. The woman's family has identified the deceased, but the police will conduct a DNA test to confirm her identity.

Sampigehalli police have registered an FIR under Section 103(1) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita.