Police officers and forensic experts examine the Vyalikaval house, where the dismembered body of a 29-year-old woman was discovered on September 21.
DH PHOTO/B K Janardhan
Bengaluru: Scattered clothes, shoes, a bag, a suitcase, bloodstains, a strong foul smell and a fridge stuffed with maggot-infested body parts — this is what the family of a 29-year-old slain woman encountered when they entered her house in central Bengaluru on Saturday.
Meena Rana, 58, was the first to discover the dismembered body of her daughter, Mahalakshmi, when she entered the house around 12.30 pm.
Mahalakshmi had been living alone on the first floor of a G+3 building on Pipeline Road near Vyalikaval since October 2023. She separated from her husband, Hemant Das, after four years of marriage, with their four-year-old daughter living with the father in Nelamangala.
Accompanied by her elder daughter, Lakshmi, Meena experienced the shock of her life when she opened the black, single-door refrigerator at Mahalakshmi's house.
"There were bloodstains on the fridge and it was infested with maggots,” Meena, 58, told the police as per the FIR seen by DH.
Inside the fridge were Mahalakshmi's remains, stacked in its three compartments.
Numbed with disbelief, Meena and Lakshmi rushed out of the house. They informed Lakshmi's husband Imran, who then called the police, according to the FIR.
The murdered victim Mahalakshmi whose remains were found stacked in a fridge in her home, stacked in its three shelves.
DH Photo
Meena and her husband, Charan Singh Rana, originally hail from a village near Kathmandu, Nepal. They moved to Nelamangala, on Bengaluru's northern outskirts, nearly 35 years ago in search of work.
Their four children — Lakshmi, the eldest, followed by Mahalakshmi, Hukum Singh and Naresh — were raised in the neighbourhood.
While the others married and moved out, Meena and Rana stayed in Nelamangala with their youngest, Naresh.
According to Meena, Mahalakshmi and her husband, Das, had quarrelled for four years before deciding to live separately.
Das, who runs a mobile phone accessories store, continued to live in Nelamangala with the child, while Meena rented a house on Pipeline Road in October 2023.
According to the FIR, Mahalakshmi’s brother Hukum Singh and his wife Deepika lived with her for 15 days but moved out due to a disagreement. "I used to visit her occasionally to make sure she was okay," Meena told the police.
Around 7 pm on September 20, Meena’s elder daughter, Lakshmi, called her, informing her that the landlord had complained about a foul smell emanating from Mahalakshmi's house.
Since it was late, Meena went to the house the following day around noon, accompanied by Rana, Lakshmi and Imran. After obtaining the spare key left with a neighbour by the landlord, Meena and Lakshmi entered the house, only to find Mahalakshmi’s dismembered body.
According to the FIR, Mahalakshmi called her father around 9 am on September 2 and promised to visit them. However, she went incommunicado afterwards.