The body of a 19-year-old married woman, who had allegedly been raped and murdered, was recovered from an area behind her home in a village in Murshidabad’s Daulatabad block, around 15km from here, on Thursday.
The victim’s mother filed a complaint of rape-and-murder at Daulatabad police station but did not name anyone in connection with the incident. She, however, suspected that a person who had made a call on her daughter’s mobile phone around 3am on Thursday.
Around six months ago, the teenager had got married to a mason, who is a resident of Murshidabad’s Raninagar. The girl had come to live at her mother’s place a month ago when her husband left home for Kerala where he works at a construction site. The girl’s father died a year ago and her mother runs the family by working at a bidi factory.
The teenager’s younger sister said that around 3am someone called on her mobile phone. “She took the call and stepped out of home while talking on the mobile phone. I thought it was a call from her husband and she had stepped out to avoid speaking in front of me. I went back to sleep.”
When the family woke up in the morning, they could not find her. They started looking for her and found her lying dead on the patch of land behind their home. Prima facie, it looked like she had been raped and killed.
The mother of the deceased said she had a “genuine suspicion” that the untimely caller was behind the crime. “It won’t take much time for the police to identify the killer. I have genuine suspicion that the person who had made the call on my daughter’s phone killed her. I demand justice for the heinous crime.”
Murshidabad superintendent of police K. Sabari Rajkumar said probe had started.
“The mobile phone of the deceased has been seized and it will help identify the person who had made the early morning call. We hope to arrest the killer soon,” the district police chief said.