Bengaluru/Bhubaneswar: The suspected killer, who chopped 29-year-old Mahalaxmi, a single working woman in Bengaluru, into over 50 pieces and stuffed the body parts in a fridge, allegedly died by suicide in Odisha on Wednesday.
The suspected killer, identified as Muktirajan Pratap Ray, was the victim’s colleague. He was found hanging from a tree near Bhuinpur village under Dhusuri police limits in Bhadrak district this morning by the locals.
Speaking to media on Thursday, Bhadrak SP Varun Guntupalli said an investigation is on here into the unnatural death case while Bengaluru Police are probing the alleged murder. “We suspect that he hanged himself fearing arrest since he was the prime accused in the case. He has also confessed to the crime in his suicide note, which will be submitted to the court. Initially, we were not aware that he was the accused. We got to know that he was the prime suspect only in the evening after registering an UD case completing all paraphernalia,” he said.
Dhusuri police station IIC Shantunu Kumar Jena earlier said that they had received information about the death by suicide around at around 8.15 am. “His body was found near Bhuinpur (where he lived). We sent it for post-mortem at around 9 am and then handed it over to the family,” he added.
Besides a bag, a diary, and a scooty, local police also recovered a suicide note from the spot purportedly admitting to have dismembered the body of the Bengaluru woman to 59 pieces after killing her. “I killed my lover Mahalaxmi on September 3. I was fed up with her conduct. I fought with her over personal matters and Mahalaxmi assaulted me. Enraged by her act, I killed her. After killing her, I had chopped her body into 59 pieces and kept them in the fridge. I have done this act after being fed up with her conduct,” IANS reported quoting the note purportedly written by him.
“Many times, she had physically assaulted me for not agreeing to marry… I was tired of her atrocities. So, I killed her,” police further said, quoting from the note found in Ray’s diary.
His brother had earlier told police that Ray had called him over the phone and confessed to the murder. He had made that call from West Bengal. The deceased woman’s estranged husband had also expressed suspicion about the involvement of a man living alone, in her neighbourhood.
Mahalakshmi and Ray worked in the same mall and were friends since 2023. The suspected killer was the team head.
He had stopped coming to work from September 1. Mahalaxmi’s last day at work was also September 1. The murder had come to light on September 21 after neighbours complained of a foul smell emanating from Mahalaxmi’s residence in Bengaluru’s Vinayaka Nagar for two days and informed her relatives.
The police too had suspected that Mahalaxmi was killed on September 2 or 3.
Bengaluru Police Commissioner B. Dayananda later said that the police had tracked the killer while informing that he was from outside and settled in Bengaluru. The Karnataka Police sent four teams to Odisha to hunt him. Karnataka Home Minister G. Parameshwara had stated that the accused is on the move in Odisha and escaping from the police.
