Woman found in bed-box, no injury mark visible as body’s decomposed

The decomposed body of a 30-year-old woman was found inside a bed-box at her rented flat in southwest Delhi’s Sevak Park near Bindapur on Wednesday morning.

Police have not ruled out sexual assault on the woman before murder.

The body so putrefied that police couldn’t ascertain whether the body was of a man or woman. It was the owner of the building who told police that the body was of his tenant, Dimpal Verma, a woman who lived alone in the flat and worked in a private company.

Senior police officers suspect that the woman was murdered almost a week ago and her killer(s), who are yet to be identified, stuffed the body inside her bed-box before locking the main door of the flat from outside. Though the bed-box was covered with mattress, the assailants had deliberately put extra clothes, blankets and bed-sheets on the bed to avoid the foul smell from spreading.

Surender Kumar, deputy commissioner of police (south-west), said the crime came to light on Wednesday morning after the woman’s landlord,

Shyam Sunder, called the police control room and informed about foul smell coming out of his tenant’s room.

A police team reached Sunder’s house and learnt that his neighbours had been complaining about bad smell since Tuesday. The police personnel broke open the main door and entered the flat.

The team members went inside the room and opened the bed-box in which the woman’s body was found. The body was sent for autopsy to a government hospital mortuary, said Kumar.

“We have registered a case of murder and investigations are underway,” he said.

“The body was so badly rotten that it was not possible to find any injury or ligature marks on it. It could be strangulation or smothering,” said Kumar.

According to police, the lane in which the murder took place was not guarded by any CCTV camera. Also, nobody saw anybody entering or leaving Verma’s flat in the last one week. Even the landlord was not familiar with people who visited her since after she started staying at his building as a tenant.

Verma provided some documents to her landlord when she took the room on rent. One of the documents mentioned an address in Mehrauli. Investigators visited the area and found that no such address existed.

“We don’t have details about Verma’s background and her past. Nobody knows from which place in India she belonged and where her family members are. It’s a blind murder case,” said Kumar.