Jamshedpur businessman Bhagwandas Gupta, who went missing from Mango on December 29 last year, is suspected to have been murdered in Hazaribagh district.

City police have received information that a badly decomposed body of a male with clothes matching that of the 50-year-old Mango businessman has been found at a jungle between Kadam and National Park along NH-33 in Ichak police station area of Hazaribagh district, some 170km from Jamshedpur.

The body was recovered on January 15, but Hazaribagh police could not identify it and sent it to RIMS in Ranchi for identification and autopsy.

Jamshedpur police got to know about the unidentified body on Tuesday.

Laxman Prasad Paswan, officer-in-charge of Mango police station where the missing complaint was lodged on December 30, 2014, said: 'We are consulting the family members of the missing person for getting the body identified.'

Officer-in-charge of Ichak police station Naveen Prasad said that the body, which appeared to belong to a 50-year-old man, was spotted in the jungle on January 15. 'When we found the body, it was badly decomposed and mutilated with wild animals obviously having feasted on it over the days. Though the clothes were intact, the shoes were missing. The man was wearing trousers, shirt and black socks. From the clothes, the man appeared to hail from a well-to-do family,' said Prasad.

Prasad's Mango counterpart Paswan said Gupta's family had told them that the businessman was wearing a black shirt and trousers, but was not specific about the socks.

Ajay Gupta, the elder son of the missing businessman, however, said that he was not aware of the recovery of any body from Hazaribagh.

'SSP Amol V. Homkar had told me that he would give us some information tomorrow (Wednesday). We have no information about his whereabouts,' said an anxious Ajay.

He added that his father was wearing a black cotswool shirt and black trousers on December 29. 'He was also wearing brown shoes, but I don't know about the colour of the socks,' Ajay said.

Gupta, owner of two iron ingot factories and other lucrative businesses, had left his Post Office Road home in Mango on a two-wheeler on the evening of December 29. But he didn't return home.

On December 30, his scooter was found on road No. 7 in Azadnagar, about 3km away from his house, while his two cellphones were found at Ramgarh on NH-33 on December 31. On December 27, two strangers had come to his Mango office and severely assaulted one of his accountants P.K. Chatterjee, demanding the businessman's mobile phone number.

Police had detained the two men, but released them after interrogation.