Bhubaneswar: Police have seized a human skeleton, suspected to be of a man who went missing 5 months back, from a forest in Odisha’s Cuttack district.
According to sources, Forest officials came across the skeleton while patrolling in Jaria forest near Gayalabanka under Chandaka-Dampada sanctuary on Thursday afternoon and informed the police. A team from Banki police station in the district went to the spot for investigation.
Speaking to the media on Friday, the IIC of the police station said since Nanda Kishore Behera, a trader of Sanamundali village under their police limits had been missing since August 28 last year, they called his nephew and went to the forest.
“We found a shirt lying near the skeleton. The Nanda Kishore’s nephew identified that the shirt belonged to his uncle. We seized the skeleton and the shirt and sent those to the forensic laboratory in Cuttack,” the IIC said.
However, whether the skeleton was that of Nanda Kishore or not would be confirmed after the DNA test, he added.
It may be noted that Nanda Kishore, who used to do business in 5 villages around Sanamundali, had not returned home on August 28 last year. His family had lodged a missing case in this regard at Banki police station.
While the family members were searching for Nanda Kishore, they found his two-wheeler and slippers lying inside Dampada-Chandaka sanctuary and spotted a huge python nearby.
Behera’s wife Saraswati Behera claimed that the python had swallowed her husband. The villagers also claimed that the large reptile had swallowed something big and was unable to move anywhere.
However, officials of the Forest department rejected Saraswati’s claim and said that a python could not swallow an adult human being.
