Shyama Choubey

Ranchi, June 2: Every morning at four, 55-year-old Shyama Choubey left her home in Harmu to pluck flowers. She did so this morning as well, but did not return.

Choubey?s body, with signs of multiple injuries in the head, was found around 6 am, hidden under bushes a little away from her apartment in Harmu Housing Colony.

She stayed in a flat on the top floor of a three-storied building with her husband Bajrangi Choubey, an executive engineer with the Jharkhand State Electricity Board, and Shailendra, the eldest of her three sons.

Blood had oozed out of her nose and ear. There was no sign of snatching as all the ornaments that the elderly homemaker was wearing were intact.

Police believe it to be a case of cold-blooded murder, but are baffled by the apparent lack of motive. Investigators have recovered two heavy, blood-stained wooden blocks from the place where the body was found and suspect that they were used to murder her.

The lady was found about 50 metres from her home and the manner in which the body was dragged to the bushes indicates that more than one person was involved in the crime.

The police have found pieces of the brown bangle that Choubey had been wearing and also her blue slippers.

Shailendra has lodged a first information report against unidentified persons with the Argora police station. The body has been sent to Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences for post-mortem but the report is yet to come.

A distraught Bajrangi Choubey said his wife left their apartment at 4.15 am to pick flowers, a routine she had been following for many years. She usually returned within 20 minutes, after which Bajrangi would go for his morning walk.

Today, when she did not return even after 45 minutes, the worried husband went out to look for her. After searching for her for an hour, he informed his tenant and family members that his wife was missing.

His landlord, a correspondent with a local daily, informed Ranchi senior police superintendent R.K. Mallick.

Once the police reached the spot, Argora officer-in-charge B. Prasad noticed some blood stains near a flower plant in front of house number D-34. There were signs on the ground indicating that somebody had been dragged. The marks led him to the compound, where the police team found Choubey?s body hidden in the bush.

Sub-inspector Kalka Ram said the killers had tried to hide the bloodstains at the spot with the help of sand. ?We are unable to explain the motive behind the murder,? he added.

There was nothing to suggest theft as well. No eyewitnesses have come forward and the police say that in any case there would have been very few people out on the road so early in the morning.

Besides Shailendra, a clerk at Kendriya Vidyalaya, Deepatoli, the Choubeys? have two other sons: Vibhesh Kumar, who is preparing for competitive examinations in Delhi after clearing the National Eligibility Test for teachers, and Pankaj Kumar, a student at Kochi Engineering College in Kerala.