'Akansha battered before murder'

Dwaipayan Ghosh | TNN | Feb 12, 2017,KOLKATA/BANKURA: The postmortem report of AkanshaSharma shows that she was battered before being strangulated. She carried deep injuries on her cheeks and chin at the time of her death besides other injuries on her body. The final report has reached Bankura police from Bhopal on Saturday. It also shows the murderer choked the victim by tying a plastic to her mouth to ensure her quick death.

Triple murder accused Udayan Das has told cops that he had copied from the film - 'The Devil's Knot' - to entomb Akansha's body and had also followed certain methods he had watched intently in the crime drama 'X-Files' while murdering his live-in partner. "Udayan has told us that he was angry with Akansha and wanted to hurt her. However, he is still elusive when we are questioning him on what generated so much hatred since he only had pleaded with Akansha to shift to Bhopal from New Delhi to wards the end of June last year," said police.

Udayan, though, opened up before Bankura Medical College forensic expert Saptarshi Chakraborty. "Udayan was interested in the subject of petrification -the process of decay or rotting in a body. He said that he had prepared breakfast - tea and sandwich -for Akansha on July 15. He mixed sleeping pills in both and murdered her around 9.30am. By 11.30 am, he had completed pouring con crete in the trunk which he had bought to hide her body. However, he felt scared the whole night and kept the light of the bedroom on. The next morning, he left for Delhi and stayed there for three days. When he returned, he smelt something foul. He, thus, employed a mason to mix the concrete and spent the next two days to entomb the body. It was only after the foul smell stopped that Udayan was relieved that his mission was successful," said police.

"We have found that Udayan knew the ATM PIN and bank account number of Akansha. We believe she was beaten up for these details. We have proof that he used these details for personal gains. In 2016 alone, Udayan withdrew Rs 1.45 lakh from Akansha's accounts," said police.

The fact that Akansha's account earlier had only Rs 1.20 lakh shows that Akansha managed another Rs 25,000 from somewhere else. We will question Akansha's family in a day or two in this regard. Udayan reportedly had withdrawn Rs 70,000 via two withdrawals on September 30 and October1last year from Akansha's account."This would not have been possible if he did not have access to Akansha's bank details," an officer said.

SP (Bankura) Sukhendu Hira said with the post-mortem report in their hands, they will be sending some bone remains of Akansha to CFSL, Kolkata for more tests. "We will send the remains on Monday to ascertain that the deceased in this case is indeed Akansa," said Hira. Udayan has further told police that he was planning to escape from Bhopal after Akansha's parents knocked on his doors but had not thought that Bankura police would reach his doorsteps in such a quick time.