Odisha: Man held for killing his girlfriend by strangulation

Bhubaneswar, April 10 (IANS) Odisha Commissionerate Police has arrested a person on the charges of killing his 30-year-old girlfriend whose decomposed body was found on the bank of Daya River in Dhauli Police station area on January 28, said Police Commissioner S Dev Datta Singh on Thursday.

He identified the accused as Chandan Parida alias Mangu, who hails from the Kujang area in Jagatsinghpur district.

He said that Parida used to work as a security guard in a private security agency at Cuttack Road in the Laxmisagar area of the city.

The Police Commissioner, during a press briefing, said that the Dhauli Police station initiated an investigation into the matter by registering an unnatural death case.

He said that the cops also came to know from the post-mortem report that the victim had been murdered by strangulation.

He added that on January 17, the deceased’s sister filed a report at the Khandagiri police station in the city regarding the disappearance of the victim, Sneha Behera, from January 10.

“The deceased, who hailed from Kandhamal, used to stay at Baramunda and worked in a private firm,” he said.

The Police Commissioner said that the Khandagiri police, during the course of investigation, managed to ascertain the original phone number of the victim, Sneha.

“The cops also found out that the victim had made several calls to the security guard's mobile number. The accused was on the radar of police earlier, but we increased strict surveillance on him after scientific analysis of the phone numbers of the accused and deceased was last traced at the crime spot on January 10, after which both of them became untraceable,” he said.

Singh added that later, police collected more evidence and found that the accused was in a relationship with the deceased Sneha.

“He took the victim to the crime spot (on January 10) and strangled her to death with a stole. Later, he fled away by leaving his job and throwing away his phone,” added Singh.

Police claimed that the accused Parida suspected the victim of developing a relationship with another person and murdered the victim following a heated argument over the issue on January 10.

In another interesting twist in the case, a person, Mitu Parida of Chandanpur in Puri district, has landed in jail for trying to implicate his lady paramour’s husband in the murder case of Sneha.

Parida, after coming to know about the recovery of the body of Sneha on the Daya River bank from social media and television channels, hatched a plan to implicate Ramesh Sahu of Jajpur in the case.

Parida had an illicit relationship with Sahu’s wife. “As per plan, Parida kept the Aadhar card of Sahu and a fake suicide note in a wallet and planted the wallet at the crime spot. Police interrogated Sahu, and the detailed facts came to light,” stated Singh.

Parida was later arrested by the Dhauli Police in the case on February 6.

--IANS

gyan/dan