BENGALURU: The ‘Freedom from Waste’ drive, launched by Bengaluru development minister Krishna Byre Gowda to get property owners to clean up vacant sites, has had an unintended consequence: It led to the discovery of a woman’s skeletal remains in Sampigehalli, north Bengaluru, and unravelling of a murder mystery.The drama started when the owner of a site in MS Nagar found a skeleton during the clean-up exercise. Barring some soiled clothes and a Ganesha pendant lying nearby, cops had no leads to ascertain the victim’s identity.With the remains beyond recognition, police conducted the last rites after spending a few days trying to trace her family members. However, investigators did not give up. Among the few belongings recovered from the remains were a clothing tag, the Ganesha pendant and bangles. Police first followed the trail of the clothing tag and obtained information from a hypermarket outlet where the garment had been purchased. Although they managed to get a contact number, cops could not make headway as calls to the number did not elicit a proper response — one of the digits in the number recorded at the time of billing was wrong.Police then turned their attention to the Ganesha pendant. Their inquiries revealed that such pendants were commonly worn in parts of Odisha. Investigators subsequently collected details of people from Odisha living within 1.5-km radius of the area where the body was found.During door-to-door visits, they identified eight women living near MS Nagar and collected their contact details. While most responded, there was no answer from one number belonging to Anusuya Behra, 28. Cops then used tower-dump data to trace another number linked to Anusuya. When they called it, her husband Sagar Chandra Ravath, 32, answered.Police visited the couple’s house in Agrahara Layout, where Sagar told them his wife had gone missing and that he planned to travel to his hometown to look for her. The two worked in a hotel nearby. Police, however, noticed discrepancies. They learnt that Sagar had been using Anusuya’s sim card on his phone and had been answering calls from her friends himself.Police made inquiries at the hotel and learnt about frequent quarrels between Sagar and Anusuya. The hotel owner informed police that Anusuya, who also worked in another hotel, had fought with Sagar on Aug 11 over salary. Cops contacted the owner of their house, who confirmed about the couple’s frequent fights and that Sagar had vacated the house a few days ago.Growing suspicion led police to take Sagar into custody and question him. He confessed to having strangled his wife to death and spending three days in the house with her body. On the fourth day, he wrapped her body in a bed and tied a rope to it. At midnight, he disposed of the body in the vacant site with bushes.A police officer said: “It was the drive to clean vacant sites that helped us trace the woman’s body and begin investigation into the murder.”Deputy commissioner of police (north-east) GK Mithun Kumar said: “The case was cracked through a combination of a clothing tag, phone numbers, technical analysis and a small Ganesh pendant.”
