2-yr missing case cracks open contract killing plot

Raipur: A two-year-old missing person case in Chhattisgarh’s Dantewada has unravelled into a chilling murder mystery involving suspicion, an alleged affair, a contract killing and a skeleton buried behind a house in a remote Bastar village.

Police claimed to have cracked the “blind murder” of a 22-year-old college student after exhuming her skeletal remains stuffed inside a plastic sack from a drain-side burial site in Toylanka village.

The victim, Ramdai Kashyap, a second-year college student who lived alone in Dantewada for studies, had mysteriously disappeared in June 2024. For nearly two years, there was no breakthrough.

Investigators now allege that the murder was orchestrated by Kamli Kartam, 40, wife of a District Reserve Guard (DRG) jawan, who suspected that her husband was in a relationship with the young woman.

According to police, Kamli paid Rs 50,000 to her relative Hungaram to eliminate Ramdai.

The case resurfaced after Dantewada SP Gaurav Rai ordered a review of old missing person files. A special team reopened the investigation and began analysing call detail records and statements of relatives when repeated calls from Ramdai’s phone were traced.

During questioning, police claimed that others stood by their statement but Kamli gave misleading info. She eventually broke down and confessed to plotting the murder out of anger over her husband’s alleged closeness to the girl.

Investigators alleged that the conspiracy was executed when the jawan was at the village for the traditional Beej festival and Kamli said that a woman relative Lakshmi Nag, 22, helped her in the crime.

Hungaram travelled to Dantewada in a pickup vehicle and entered the house of the victim, allegedly smothered her mouth and slit her neck before transporting the body overnight to neighbouring village.

The body was buried behind a house.

Acting on Kamli’s disclosure, police, along with a magistrate, forensic experts and witnesses, excavated the site and recovered a human skeleton packed inside a plastic sack.

Police have arrested Kamli Kartam and Lakshmi Nag and sent them to judicial remand, while Hungaram is at large.