Missing woman's body found buried inside boyfriend's house in Bhopal

Bhopal: In a grisly incident, a man has been arrested here for allegedly murdering his live-in partner and virtually entombing the body under a marble platform at his residence here.

The body of the woman, who hailed from Bankura in West Bengal, was exhumed in the wee hours today and it took police six hours to recover it, they said.

The accused Udyan Das (32) strangulated the woman to death, stuffed the body in an iron box and then constructed a marble platform over it to hide the crime. "West Bengal police have arrested Udyan Das (32) here on charges of murdering his live-in partner Akanksha (28) alias Shweta Sharma. The accused admitted to killing her in December last year and then burying the body under a marble platform on the first floor of his house," Govindpura City Superintendent of Police Virendra Mishra said today.

"We exhumed the body from under the platform at around 4 AM with the help of drilling machines. It has been sent for postmortem and further interrogation is underway," he said.

The incident came to fore yesterday when West Bengal police arrived in the state capital in search of Akanksha following a complaint lodged by her father Shivendra Sharma after the family lost touch with her.

According to police, Udyan had befriended the victim on a social media site. The accused told police that he killed Akanksha in a fit of rage by strangulating her in the last week of December 2016, after they had a dispute over an issue.

Das further told the police that after strangulating Akanksha, he packed her body in an iron box and then buried it under the platform, police informed. "The accused poured in cement inside an iron box after stuffing the body. He then put the box inside another bigger box and again filled cement in it. These boxes were then covered with a marble platform," he said.

According to police, the accused has been changing his statements on various aspects, including his relationship status with the victim. "Das initially said that he had married Akanksha at the local BHEL Kalibadi temple. Later, he said that he married her in New York. But it was found that he never visited New York. So, we are still in the process of ascertaining the details given by him," an officer at Govindpura police station said.

According to police, the accused claimed that he had first met Akanksha in 2007 and remained in contact with her on a social networking site. He later changed his version, stating that the victim came to live with him in Bhopal after they became friends on Facebook last year, the officer said, adding that Udyan had a lavish lifestyle and used to travel in costly cars. "We have been verifying details. He would be produced in a court today," the police officer said.

Police also said Akanksha's family had lodged a complaint with West Bengal Police in Bankura after they lost touch with her.

Akanksha's father claimed that his daughter had left home in June 2016 seeking job. She was in touch with her parents over phone, but it stopped in December last year and since then remained in contact only through text messages. She told her parents in a message that she was working in the US.

Suspecting her activities, the family traced the phone number through which she used to text and found that the number was registered on an address in Saket Nagar here. Later, they lodged a complaint with Bankura police on January 5.

The West Bengal police kept an eye on Udyan's phone records and detained him after reaching Bhopal yesterday. He then spilled the beans during interrogation.

Police said that based on Udyan's admission, they started digging the marble platform at his house and recovered the body this morning.