Day after elderly woman's body found chopped up in drum, 40-year-old acquaintance arrested

A day after the dismembered body of a 70-year-old woman was found stuffed inside a drum, her acquaintance was arrested in connection with the killing, police said on Monday.

The accused, identified as Dinesh (40), has been arrested in connection with the murder that took place on Saturday, they said.

During interrogation, the accused confessed to his crime and told interrogators that since he was in debt, he decided to eliminate the elderly woman and steal her jewellery. On the pretext of taking her to a temple, he took her to his house and strangled her, a senior police officer said.

“After killing her, he took all her gold jewellery ornaments to a jeweller. Then he got to know that except for a pair of earrings, everything else was not real but ‘rolled gold’ (gold plated). To hide his crime, he chopped up her body into parts and stuffed it inside a drum at a vacant plot near an abandoned house,” the officer said.

The deceased, Sushilamma, and her daughter were living in a rented flat in Nisarga Layout in K R Puram. Sushilamma used to go to temples often and sometimes even to her son’s house, so the daughter initially did not suspect anything amiss when her mother did not return home on Saturday night, according to the police.

The body was found by the police on Sunday evening from a vacant plot near an abandoned house after local residents complained to the police about a foul smell emanating from the spot.