Cuttack: Early Thursday morning, morning walkers on Cuttack’s Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Setu noticed something amiss, an abandoned bag and a pair of slippers left near the edge. Peering over the side, their worst fears were confirmed when they spotted a body on the sand bed of the Kathajodi river.
Alerted at 5:40 am, Barang police and Fire Services personnel rushed to the scene. After trekking over 1.5 km, they retrieved the body from the shallow waters and sent it in an ambulance to SCB Medical College and Hospital for postmortem. “The water was only about a foot deep, so the body wasn’t fully submerged, but it had hardened. Because of this, we suspect the incident occurred late last night,” a fire official told reporters.
Based on a doctor’s prescription found inside the abandoned bag, police have identified the deceased as Chandrika Hembram (28), a resident of Udala in Mayurbhanj district. She was pursuing her MBBS at Fakir Mohan Medical College and Hospital in Balasore.
A mobile phone was also recovered from her belongings.
While witnesses claim that the woman leaped from the bridge, police emphasise that they are not ruling out any possibilities at this stage. All potential scenarios, including suicide and the possibility of foul play, are being probed.
It comes days after a half-buried body of an unidentified woman was recovered from the Kathajodi riverbed near Brahmanigan, leading to the alleged custodial torture of 32-year-old Rakesh Behera of Chandiprasad village.
