Delhi-Lucknow highway 'body dumping hotspot': Another woman’s corpse found stuffed in suitcase on NH-9 in Hapur

MEERUT: In yet another horrid discovery at the 'body dumping hotspot' along Delhi-Lucknow NH-9 stretch in Hapur's Pilakhua area, a decomposed body of a middle-aged woman stuffed in a suitcase was found on Monday. This is the latest in a series of similar chilling recoveries along the stretch where nearly a dozen bodies have been found in the past one-and-a-half years, most of them being those of women.Hapur SP Kunwar Gyananjay Singh said a farmer spotted a black suitcase in his sugarcane field in Pilakhua area around 11am on Monday. "Forensic teams collected samples. It is likely that the woman was killed some other place and the body was dumped here a few weeks back," said Singh.The spot where the body was found is less than a kilometre away from the highway. "The area does not have CCTV cameras and is seldom frequented by people. We will soon work out the case," SP Singh said.TOI had earlier reported how the NH-9 stretch in Hapur has become a "disposal site" for bodies from Haryana, Delhi, Ghaziabad and neighbouring districts. In Nov 2024, the body of an unidentified woman in her early 30s was found stuffed in a red suitcase near a service lane along the highway. Later, it was found that the victim was from Gurgaon and was murdered by her husband.In June 2024, police found another woman's body in a sack in Babugarh. She was from Bulandshahr and her husband was arrested for the murder later. In Dec 2023, the dismembered body of an unidentified woman was found in a sack. In the same month, another woman from Ghaziabad was killed over a property dispute, and her body was dumped on the side of the highway here.Police said the pattern remains consistent — murders are carried out elsewhere and the remains are packed in suitcases or sacks and dumped in secluded spots along the highway, which passes through 14 districts across five states -- Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, Uttarakhand and UP.Law enforcement officials said Hapur has become a frequent "disposal site" due to its location at the intersection of several highways, including NH-9, Eastern Peripheral Expressway and Delhi-Meerut Expressway.