Police have solved the mystery of a woman’s body found in a plastic drum at SMVT Bengaluru, India’s first air-conditioned railway terminal.
They have arrested three men for strangling 27-year-old Tamanna, stuffing her body in the drum and dumping it at the railway station on March 14.
The killers had broken her hands and legs in order to fit the body into the drum and seal it. They actually wanted to put the drum on a train to their home state of Bihar but chickened out after reaching the station around midnight on March 12. They left the drum near the entrance and scooted off.
A QR code on the drum helped police track them down.
Police believe that Tamanna was assaulted and killed by her husband’s brother and other relatives. They have arrested Kamaal, 21, Tanveer, 28, and Shakib, 25, and are hunting for the kingpin, Nawab.
Tamanna married Intekhab, a distant relative of her first husband Afroz, eight months ago. The couple lived near Jigani where Intekhab worked as an AC mechanic for a private firm.
The discovery of Tamanna’s decomposed body raised suspicions that a serial killer was on the prowl in Bengaluru.
Two women in their 30s have been found murdered at different railway stations in the city since December 2022. Both remain unidentified. One of the bodies was found in a similar drum.
Dr S K Soumyalatha, Superintendent of Police, Railways, said that there were no more similarities between the three cases.
Police investigations show that Tamanna married Afroz, a physically challenged person from Bihar, in 2020. She later got into an affair with their neighbour and Afroz’s distant relative, Intekhab. She eventually eloped with him to Bengaluru and reportedly married him.
Intekhab’s elder brother, Nawab, and his other relatives were not happy with his relationship with Tamanna. They believed that he had ruined the family’s reputation back home in Bihar.
Nawab decided to separate the couple and hatched a plan. On Sunday, he invited them over for lunch in Kalasipalyam. He and other relatives asked Intekhab to go back home alone, saying they would send Tamanna to Bihar by train.
Intekhab put up resistance but was helpless. He left Tamanna with a relative in Kalasipalyam and returned home. Later that evening, Nawab and others strangled Tamanna, stuffed the body in a drum and decided to keep it on a train to Bihar.
Police believe Intekhab wasn’t involved in the murder. They say he tried to find out if Tamanna had reached Bihar. When he didn’t find her whereabouts, he started looking for her.
A plain-clothesman later got in touch with him. He told him what had happened.