Suspects in Goa women murder cases elude cops
‘Same killer or killers not ruled out’
The police interrogated over 26 people on Thursday in connection with the murders of four women which has shaken Goa for the extent of the brutality, but plausible suspects have eluded them so far.
The police also released the photograph of one of the victims whose face was not disfigured by her attacker or attackers, to try and identify her.
The women were all killed in a span of 48 hours over Monday and Tuesday, and the bodies of three victims were burnt post-mortem, leading to the strong suspicion that the homicides are linked to the same killer or killers. The police said that possibility was not being ruled out. “The cases might be linked, we are keeping all options open,” DIG Yadav said. The women were either strangulated or smothered to death and their bodies burnt to wipe out the evidence.
Two of the women, one a 16 year-old schoolgirl and the other a 60-year-old mother, were identified by relatives from the scraps of clothes left on the charred bodies. No one has come to claim the other two bodies, both are aged between 25-30. The photograph released by the police shows a young woman wearing sindhur and mehendi on her hands. Her torso was badly burnt, but among the four victims, her face alone was not disfigured.
Meanwhile, the Goa police managed to crack another unrelated homicide case. Four youths were arrested on Thursday for the murders of a 30-year-old woman, her children aged 7 and 4 and a male companion, 60, whose bodies were found in a creek in Panaji on Wednesday. The arrested men, aged between 18 and 28 were working on fishing trawlers and were petty thieves, Yadav said.
The police have not ruled out sexual assault on the victim, Sunita Shetye.
