Man strangles live-in partner to death, buries her under marble platform

A man was arrested for allegedly strangling his live in partner to death and burying the body under a marble platform.

Bhopal, Feb 3: In a grisly incident, a man has been arrested in Bhopal for allegedly murdering his live-in partner and virtually entombing the body under a marble platform at his residence. The body of the woman, who hailed from Bankura in West Bengal, was exhumed in the wee hours on Friday and it took police six hours to recover it, they said.

The accused Udyan Das, 32, strangulated the woman to death, stuffed the body in an iron box and then constructed a marble platform over it to hide the crime.

"West Bengal police have arrested Udyan Das on charges of murdering his live-in partner Akanksha alias Shweta Sharma. The accused admitted to killing her in December last year and then burying the body under a marble platform on the first floor of his house," Govindpura city superintendent of police Virendra Mishra told PTI on Friday.

"We exhumed the body from under the platform at around 4 am with the help of drilling machines. It has been sent for postmortem and further interrogation is underway," he said.

The incident came to fore on Thursday when West Bengal police arrived in the state capital in search of Akanksha following a complaint lodged by her father Shivendra Sharma after the family lost touch with her.

According to police, Udyan had befriended the victim on a social media site. The accused told police that he killed Akanksha in a fit of rage by strangulating her in the last week of December 2016, after they had a dispute over an issue. Das further told the police that after strangulating Akanksha, he packed her body in an iron box and then buried it under the platform, police informed.

"The accused poured in cement inside an iron box after stuffing the body. He then put the box inside another bigger box and again filled cement in it. These boxes were then covered with a marble platform," he said.

According to police, the accused has been changing his statements on various aspects, including his relationship status with the victim.

"Das initially said that he had married Akanksha at the local BHEL Kalibadi temple. Later, he said that he married her in New York. But it was found that he never visited New York. So, we are still in the process of ascertaining the details given by him," an officer at Govindpura police station said.

PTI