Mumbai man kills partner, chops up her body to hide evidence: Indian media

A man in the western Indian city of Mumbai has allegedly killed his partner, chopped up the body and boiled some of the pieces in a pressure cooker to hide evidence, according to the Indian media.

Manoj Sahani, the 56-year-old accused, has been arrested. He had been living with the 32-year-old victim, Saraswati Vaidya, in Mumbai's Geeta Nagar since 2014.

The accused chopped the body into over 20 pieces using a cutter to hide the evidence of the crime, The Indian Express reported on Thursday, quoting officials.

Vaidya's decomposing body, severed into multiple pieces, was found in her apartment on Wednesday night, according to a senior official, per NDTV. The victim was an orphan.

The neighbours had alerted police about an unpleasant smell coming from Vaidya's flat. Police had to break open the door and enter the apartment on the seventh floor of a residential building.

A hunt for the Sahani, a ration shop worker, was launched and he was soon arrested from the colony while he was trying to flee, according to the media reports.

The motive behind the crime has yet to be ascertained. Neighbours told the police that the couple would often fight, the Indian Express reported.

“We are further interrogating him,” Jayant Bajbale, Deputy Commissioner of Police, Mumbai, told the media.

According to Shrikant Pathak, Additional Commissioner of Police, the killing took place on June 4 and the accused could have disposed of some body parts in different areas.

The cutters used in the crime have been recovered by the police.

Police also said that the accused boiled some parts of Vaidya’s body in a pressure cooker and then filled it in plastic bags to dump it.

Around 12 to 13 pieces of the woman’s body were found inside the flat, news agency ANI reported.

The police are investigating the matter and trying to find out the circumstances that led to the murder.

DCP Bajbale said “the situation is deeply troubling and we are committed to finding justice for Ms Vaidya”.

This incident is a chilling reminder of the murder of Shraddha Walkar, who was allegedly strangled by partner Aftab Poonawala on May 18 last year. Poonawala hacked her body into pieces and kept them in a fridge for almost three weeks at his house in south Delhi. He then scattered the pieces at different places in the capital city.

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