The highly decomposed body of an unidentified woman has been found in a plastic storage drum at SMVT, India's first fully-air-conditioned railway station that opened last year.
This is the third incident of a woman's body being found at a railway station in Bengaluru in just over three months. Police see a pattern in the diabolic murders and suspect a serial killer.
Railway Protection Force (RPF) officials were perplexed by a putrid smell that had permeated the spotless train terminal since Monday morning but didn't know its source.
By evening, their attention was drawn to an unattended drum next to an automatic sliding door. After determining that the drum was indeed the source of the smell, RPF officials sealed it and called the Baiyappanahalli railway police around 7.30 pm.
Senior officials of the railway police, including Dr Soumyalatha S K, Superintendent of Police (Railways), Bengaluru, rushed to the spot. When the drum was cut open, it revealed a woman's decomposed body.
Dr Soumyalatha said that forensic and fingerprint experts were on the scene to collect samples. A sniffer dog squad has also been pressed into service, she added.
On January 4, police found a similarly decomposed body of a woman in a drum at the Yeshwantpur railway station. Before that, another female body was found inside a compartment of train number 06527 (Bangarpet-SMVT Bengaluru Express) at the Baiyappanahalli railway station on December 6, 2022.
All three women were in their 30s. While a serial killer is suspected to be involved in all the murders, senior police officers cautioned against jumping to conclusions. All the murders remain unsolved.
"We will investigate the similarities between the two murders," Soumyalatha said, referring to the bodies found at SMVT and Yeshwantpur stations.
Police are reviewing CCTV footage to find out who kept the drum and when.