KEM docs help reconstruct face of woman murdered 10 months ago

Mumbai: After several failed attempts to identify a partially-decomposed body of a woman, found ten months ago in Mankhurd, the Mumbai police have got some hope as the KEM Hospital has helped them to reconstruct the face of the deceased

Mumbai: After several failed attempts to identify a partially-decomposed body of a woman, found ten months ago in Mankhurd, the Mumbai police have got some hope as the KEM Hospital has helped them to reconstruct the face of the deceased.

KEM docs help reconstruct face of woman murdered 10 months ago

The police are now able to send out alerts across the city stations, and outside so the deceased’s family could identify her and approach them.

According to cops, the body was discovered by the locals near Zakir Hussain Nagar in Mankhurd. It was in a partially-decomposed state and could be aged between 17 and 21 years. She was allegedly killed, as her legs and neck were tied with a dupatta, and the body was wrapped in a plastic bag. The woman was wearing a silver anklet, emblazoned with the trademark ‘BS’.

The police also found a red bangle in her hand, and a silver ring studded with white pearl on her finger.

During the investigation, police questioned several jewellers and vendors in the city, who sold silver anklets with BS trademarks on them.

“We found that a Kolhapur-based company manufactured the silver anklets with BS trademark. We also contacted the company at Kolhapur and inquired with the owner, they said the silver anklets with BS mark were sold in bulk to several vendors across the state and outside. The anklets were not marked with serial numbers; hence it was not possible to identify the particular buyer and subsequently, the police could not get any headway in identifying the deceased,” said police inspector Ravindra Salunkhe.

After this, the Mankhurd police registered a case of murder and destruction of evidence against unknown persons and formed several teams to identify the woman and the accused. The case was later transferred to crime branch unit 6 for investigation. The police inquired with several suspects, examined CCTV footage of the vicinity, and verified all missing cases, registered across the city and outside. But nothing was found, which could lead cops to identify the deceased and her murderer. The police then approached doctors from the KEM Hospital to superimpose the face of the deceased.

Doctor Hemlata Pandey, assistant professor and forensic odontologist, KEM Hospital said, “We scanned the body, performed radiological techniques for age estimation specific to Indian Population. With the scanned skull, we did forensic facial reconstruction using 3 D Digital techniques. Earlier we were mostly doing manual reconstructions but we have slowly moved towards 3 Dimensional Digital techniques during the pandemic.”