Gurgaon: Three days after a decomposed body was discovered in a forested area near Elan Mall in Sector 83, police on Sunday identified the victim as a 25-year-old mother of two and determined she had been strangled to death. Investigators are also probing the possibility of a sexual assault.
The woman, originally from Uttar Pradesh, had been residing in a slum cluster under the Kherki Daula police station limits for several years. She worked as a ragpicker, while her husband is a laborer.
According to investigators, injury marks were found on her neck. “The investigation has established that the woman was murdered. She was strangled, either with a rope or a piece of cloth. There were no other visible injury marks. The body was heavily decomposed and infested with maggots. Its condition also points to the possibility of sexual assault before the murder,” an investigator said.
Police suspect that the woman was killed elsewhere and her body was later dumped in the forested area.
The victim had been missing for three days before her body was discovered. Her family had lodged a missing person complaint at the police station after failing to trace her. While the case was initially handled by Sector 10 police, the investigation has since been transferred to Kherki Daula police station.
Police are yet to identify or arrest the accused. “We are awaiting the postmortem report and will take appropriate legal action based on its findings. We will trace the accused soon,” an officer at Kherki Daula police station said.
Investigators are scanning CCTV footage and questioning people who were in contact with the victim before her disappearance.
Senior officers, including DCP (west) Karan Goyal, visited the scene. Teams from the crime branch, forensic science laboratory (FSL) and scene-of-crime unit also inspected the area and collected evidence.
Police said the body was identified on Sunday after details were circulated through the zonal integrated police network (ZIPNET) and shared with police units across Gurgaon, neighboring districts and adjoining states. The identification was made on the basis of a missing person complaint filed by the victim’s family.
