Carpenter’s precision in autopsy findings solves murder mystery

Jaipur: A key postmortem observation about the precision of body dismemberment led Nagaur police to solve the murder of a 75-year-old woman and arrest her neighbour, a carpenter.Nagaur SP Roshan Meena identified the main accused as Mukesh Bharti, 38, a carpenter and neighbour of the victim, Nathi Devi. Police said Bharti, along with his wife Maya and nephew Chandanpuri, allegedly conspired to kill the elderly woman to rob her of jewellery. Police sources said the elderly woman was wearing jewellery worth nearly Rs 5 lakh. Bharti was arrested Friday, while his wife Maya and nephew Chandanpuri have been detained. The grisly murder surfaced Monday when villagers found a sack containing the woman's torso, with the head and limbs severed, in a forested area under Padukalan police station limits. Meena said that the chilling nature of the crime triggered a massive manhunt by the police. "We formed 10 teams and deployed nearly 300 personnel, along with drones and dog squads, to comb a 10-km rocky terrain," the SP said. On Wednesday, investigators recovered the victim's severed head and legs from two separate sacks dumped at different locations, indicating an attempt to mislead the probe. The breakthrough, though, came from the postmortem report, which noted that the dismemberment showed the kind of precision associated with a trained carpenter. Investigators also found fodder inside the sacks, which became another crucial clue. Using these leads, the cyber cell analysed around 8,000 mobile numbers before narrowing suspicion to Bharti, a resident of Paladi Kalan. During a raid at his house and enclosure, police found bloodstains on the floor and in stored groundnut fodder. Blood traces were also detected in his Wagon-R car, which was allegedly used to transport and dump the body parts. Police recovered the axe believed to have been used in the murder. During interrogation, Bharti allegedly confessed and named his wife and nephew as co-conspirators in the killing and disposal of the body, police said. Meena said the case was cracked through tight coordination and technical investigation, with multiple teams working round the clock.