Maharashtra police have launched a manhunt after a 20-year-old woman was stabbed to death by an unknown assailant in Navi Mumbai’s Uran and her remains were found dumped inside the bushes near the railway station late on Friday. According to the police, the deceased has been identified as Yashshri Shinde, a Uran resident, who worked in a company in Belapur.
The woman was reported missing on Thursday. While the search was on for her, the police received a call at 2 am on Saturday informing them that a woman's dead body was found in the bushes near the railway station. A team was subsequently sent to the spot and the remains were sent for postmortem.
“The woman was identified by her family at the hospital following which a case of murder was registered,” an officer from the Uran police station told The Indian Express.
Police believe the victim was killed sometime between 3:30 pm and 4:30 pm on Friday when she had taken half-day leave from her Navi Mumbai office. Cops are checking CCTV footage to ascertain the facts.
As per the The Indian Express report, Shinde’s father Surendra Kumar accused a man named Dawood Shaikh of his daughter's murder. The victim's father had filed a police complaint against Shaikh in 2019 for harassing his daughter and he believes the murder was an act of revenge over that issue.
The police, however, said that the murder could be a case of a one-sided love affair gone wrong.
According to Deputy Commissioner of Police Vivek Pansare, though the victim's body was chopped into pieces, multiple stab injuries were found on her stomach and back.
"We have registered a case of murder and if medical reports reveal that she was raped before being killed, we will add appropriate sections to the FIR," he said.
The Uran police said that seven teams have been formed to locate the suspect and the crime branch is conducting a parallel investigation.