Bhubaneswar, Aug. 16: Police today arrested Buddhadev Behera, a 31-year-old labour contractor, for allegedly raping and murdering a woman in a forest at Delanga of Puri district on August 2.

Behera, a native of Deograh, was working in Andhra Pradesh. The police suspected him of being a serial killer. He was earlier involved in similar crimes in Odisha and Andhra Pradesh.

The naked body of the 27-year-old woman, was found with her throat slit in the forest on August 2. The police had seized an ATM card, a SBI green card and a mobile phone belonging to one Sunil Kumar Mahato, a native of Jharkhand, from the spot. "The belongings of Mahato were stolen from Vijayawada railway station on July 15," said an investigating officer.

The police said the woman came in contact with the accused three months ago. "A native of Raikia in Kandhamal district, she was also working as a labour contractor in Andhra. She was separated from her husband due to family disputes. The accused brought her to Jatni (Khurda Road) by train and later took her to Delanga in an auto-rickshaw. There, Behera secretly spiked a mango drink with a psychotropic drug and offered it to the woman. The victim became unconscious after drinking it. Then, Behera took her to a forest and raped her there. After the rape, Behera slit her throat with a knife and took a train from the nearby railway station and fled from the spot," said Puri police superintendent Sarthak Sarangi.

The police came to know about another similar incident in Andhra in July in which another labourer was raped and killed. "Even in that case, Andhra police found some insurance certificates of a person belonging to Cuttack. When Andhra police conducted an inquiry in Cuttack, they also found that the document was stolen from Puri. Based on these information, we tracked down the accused," Sarangi said.

"Behera was married in Deograh and had a dowry torture case pending against him in Deogarh in 2010. In 2012, he was arrested in a case of rape and murder and was lodged in jail. But in the same year, he complained of leg pain and was taken to a hospital in Deogarh from where he escaped. Since then, he used to stay in various places in Bihar, Jharkhand and Andhra and commit theft in trains. He used to leave stolen belongings of the passengers at murder spots to mislead the police," said Sarangi.