Bhubaneswar: Police have intensified the search for a 26-year-old man and his girlfriend from Odisha, who have been identified as the prime suspects in the gruesome murder of a 45-year-old woman, whose headless and dismembered body was found stuffed inside an abandoned suitcase aboard the Tamil Nadu Express at Agra Cantonment station.
According to reports, special teams have tracked the mobile signals of Manik Uddin Laskar and Bhagmati Majhi to Odisha, where they allegedly fled after abandoning the suitcase. Three teams have already been dispatched to the state to apprehend them, while further investigation is underway to examine the circumstances of the killing and the motive, which remain unclear.
The deceased has been identified as Hayathun Nisha, 38, wife of Jahhur Khan, and a native of Jagatsinghpur in Odisha. She was working at a private firm in the city.
The incident came to light after passengers in a rear general compartment of the Tamil Nadu Express alerted railway authorities to a foul smell emanating from a large red trolley bag as the train arrived at Agra Cantonment railway station on August 6. On opening the suitcase, Agra Railway Police found the headless, decomposed torso of a woman. The body was sent for postmortem and a case was registered.
With the assistance of the Tamil Nadu Police, Agra Railway Police examined more than 200 CCTV recordings from Chennai Central and Guduvancheri. Footage from Platform 4 at Chennai Central revealed that a man and a woman had carried an identical red trolley bag onto the train shortly before its departure. However, the duo left the suitcase inside the compartment, disembarked right before the train pulled out, and walked to the nearby Chennai Park railway station. From there, they boarded an electric train to Guduvanchery and took an autorickshaw to a residential neighbourhood.
After tracing the suspects to a locked house on Masuthi Street on August 21, police forced entry and found additional body parts, some allegedly hidden in a large cooking vessel, along with evidence suggesting the woman was killed and dismembered on the premises. Neighbours confirmed that two women and a man from Odisha had stayed there for several days before vanishing.
