Kochi: The woman whose body was wrapped in a bed sheet and dumped into the Periyar River remains unidentified thanks to the huge volume of work the police are left with and the transfer of investigating officers.
The circle inspector in charge of investigation has been transferred in view of the upcoming general election. Everyone in the investigating team but for a sub inspector have been deputed elsewhere. The police were also distracted by a big theft that happened near Nedumbassery.
The police are yet to come across any clue leading to the identification of the body though they matched the details with thousands of missing cases reported from outside Kerala. The body has to be identified if the police were to continue with the investigation. The police have received some lead on the persons who bought the bed sheet in which the body was wrapped but the information does not seem to be concrete.
The investigators only know that the buyers were a man and woman travelling in a white Polo car. The police have started collecting details of people who own such a car in the state. Vehicle service centres have been asked to be on alert in the hope that the duo might approach them to clean up any blood stains.
The police have already rifled through the surveillance camera footage in the area and gone through the call records under the mobile phone towers in the vicinity.
The police expect to collect information about the victim by checking the Aadhaar biometric database. Forensic experts are learned to have obtained her fingerprint.
The woman has a black mole on her chin.
The police suspect that the perpetrators knew the area well, going by a hypothesis that they drove the body via a small road beneath the Mangalapuzha bridge before dumping it into the river. This road is not readily visible to anyone travelling on the busy Mangalapuzha bridge. Only those people who lived in the area or who had dined at a roadside eatery beneath the bridge could have any idea about the road.
The investigators are also surprised that no missing case has been reported even after finding the body. They have alerted information technology and construction sectors where people from other states usually come to work.
If the victim was attacked in her house, it might take a while for someone to report it, the police said.
