8 held for murdering teenage girl &dumping body stuffed into suitcase | Bengaluru News

Bengaluru: Bengaluru rural police arrested seven people and detained a minor on charges of murdering a 17-year-old girl, stuffing her body into a suitcase, and later dumping it near railway tracks near Anekal.The body was recovered on the morning of May 21, and preliminary police investigations revealed that the victim was strangled to death.Passersby discovered the blue suitcase near a railway bridge in Chandapura. The suitcase was lying in the middle of a mud road, and fearing it might contain explosives, the public called Suryanagar police.Investigations revealed that the victim hailed from Bihar. Her father, a daily wage worker, has two wives and seven daughters. The victim was the second daughter of the first wife.The teenager was lured into a love trap by a man she knew and came to the city with him on May 18. The man, identified as Ashiq Kumar, 42, is the prime accused in the case. He strangled the victim inside his relative’s house in Bommanahalli on the night of May 20, police said. A resident of Kacharakanahalli, Ashiq Kumar works as a helper in a factory.Other arrested suspects are Mukesh Kumar and his wife Indu Devi, Raja Rao Kumar, Kalu Kumar and Pintu Kumar, all residents of Bommasandra. While the minor boy was remanded to a juvenile home, other suspects were produced before a court which Friday handed them to six-day police custody.However, police are yet to find why Ashiq Kumar strangled the girl and what led to the provocation. The murder allegedly took place inside Mukesh’s house. “We arrested Ashiq Kumar on charges of murdering her, while others were arrested for helping him dispose of the body and destroy the evidence,” an investigating officer said.Kumar is married and has two children. “According to Kumar’s confession, he was in an inebriated condition when the victim started fighting with him. In a fit of rage, he strangled her, and she died instantly. Stuffing the body into the suitcase, Kumar, along with Mukesh, Raja Rao, and Kalu Kumar, dumped it in Mukesh’s car and drove towards Chandapura railway bridge at night, which is around 4km away. There, they dumped the suitcase and drove back,” police said.As the news of police finding the victim’s body spread, Kumar and others panicked, and fled to Rahulnagar in Bihar on May 23. “By then, we discovered that a car came near the bridge that night, stopped for some time, and vanished. Working on this lead, we traced the car with the help of its licence plate. The vehicle is in Mukesh’s name, and by the time we reached his Bommasandra residence, he had fled. We also visited Ashiq Kumar’s Kacharakanahalli residence and found it locked. Finally, we traced them to their hideouts in Rahulnagar and arrested them,” the investigating officer said.