Solving a crime: How a missing person’s application helped Mumbai police solve the case of a woman’s torso found in Lake Chembur
A 36-year-old caterer has been arrested for the murder of a woman he was having an affair with. He chopped up her body into parts and disposed of them at three locations in Chembur, police said.
Police used the family’s help and DNA analysis to confirm that the body found at Charai Lake was Kantas. (Representative image)Listen to this article
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This was an application for an unregistered missing persons report to Bhoiwada Police Station on 31 October 2013 assisted the Mumbai Police Arrest of a suspect after a woman’s torso was found at Lake Charai in Chembur. The woman’s head and limbs had been severed to ensure her identity could not be established.
The Chembur police’s first task was to identify the woman. They began checking missing persons reports across the city that matched that of a missing woman in her 30s and 40s.
Although the police found no such case of registered missing persons, a police officer from Bhoiwada informed them that such a request had been received.
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Police then contacted the woman who reported that her sister Kanta Shetty, 31, a fashion designer, had been missing for several days. Shetty’s husband had died by suicide and the couple had a son. Police used the family’s help and DNA analysis to confirm that the body found at Charai Lake was Kantas.
Her sister Suhasini told police she suspected the role of a caterer at Chembur Gymkhana, Prabhakar Shetty, 36. She also told police that her sister and Prabhakar were having an affair after the two met on a train ride from Mangaluru to Mumbai. Kanta had asked Prabhakar to marry him, but he was engaged to another woman, causing frequent quarrels between the couple.
Chembur police then arrested Prabhakar for questioning and eventually arrested him on charges of murdering Kanta. Police alleged that Prabhakar strangled Kanta to death in staff quarters on the night of October 29 while he was absent from work. He hid a knife in the bathroom and took her inside, police said.
There he is said to have strangled her and later hacked up her body under the running tap in the bathroom to avoid blood stains. He put her head, torso and limbs in three separate plastic bags, police claimed.
He then took a car and threw the bag with the head at Chembur Shell Colony, the one with the torso at Charai Lake and the one with the limbs at the Trombay jetty, police said. First, the second bag with the torso was found, after which the police began investigating and the case was solved.
First publication on: 20-07-2023 at 14:13 IST
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