Twenty-six days after a 21-year-old woman went missing from Odisha’s Keonjhar district, police on Sunday said they had exhumed her remains from the forest after a man with whom she was in a relationship confessed to killing her.
Police said Sahaja Alda, 26, killed the woman on suspicion of having an affair with another man. Ashok Nayak, a local police officer, said the woman left home on May 11 without her mobile phone. When her family checked her phone records, they found that she had received the last call from Alda.
Alda initially denied any knowledge of her whereabouts when the family approached the Keonjhar Superintendent of Police seeking intervention over the alleged police inaction, as the woman remained untraceable, and her mother filed a complaint on May 14.
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Police arrested Alda on Sunday after he confessed to killing the woman. Police said Alda led them to a hole inside the forest, about five kilometers from where she was killed, where the remains were recovered. The body was exhumed in the presence of the judge with the assistance of forensic teams.
Police said Alda became suspicious of the 21-year-old’s social media activity. On May 11, Alda allegedly called her to meet him near a football field, about half a kilometer from their village. Alda allegedly killed her by stabbing her repeatedly in the neck.
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Police said Alda initially left the body before returning later. He allegedly disposed of his blood-stained clothes near a dam, took the body on his motorcycle into the forest, buried it in a hole, and hid the woman’s belongings and the murder weapon separately.
The police confiscated the motorcycle, the woman’s scarf, slippers, a sharp weapon and other incriminating materials.
