GHASTLY MURDER – VICTIM KILLED AND BEHEADED

MARGAO: In a ghastly attack, an unidentified young man was killed and beheaded by unknown assailants before his body was dumped in the open fields at Ramnagari, Mugalli, near Sao Jose de Areal on Monday night.

The naked body sans its head was recovered by Maina Curtorim police on Tuesday morning. Police have registered a case of murder against unknown accused.

Police sources said the body was found dumped some 150 m away from the main road. His hands were found tied in the front with a nylon rope and there were multiple stab injuries on several parts of the body.

Sources added that the deceased appeared to be in the age group of 35-40 years, was 5.7 ft, had a strong built and wheatish complexion.

There was nothing on his body, except a red-coloured thread to which was found tied a cream-colour sachet containing what looked like a tawiz, police sources said. A pair of blood-stained rubber slippers labeled "Evees" was found in the vicinity of the corpse, they added.

DySP Umesh Gaonkar, who is supervising the investigations, said that police teams, assisted by sniffer-dog squads, combed the area within a radius of half-a-kilometer of the crime site in the hope of tracing the corpse's head, but all attempts proved futile.

"The search is under way, as establishing the identity of the deceased is our top priority at the moment," Gaonkar said. Stating that the murder must have been borne out of some "strong enmity" and in cold blood, the DySP said that at least two-three persons were involved in executing the gruesome murder.

"It was definitely pre-meditated and carried out using at least two deadly weapons. Besides the head being severed with a chopper, the stab injuries reveal that a sharp, pointed weapon was also used to attack the deceased. The assailants took care to see that the identity of the body is not revealed, as can be seen from the fact that all his clothes were torn apart. Only the cuffs of the shirt he was wearing and a small piece of a black colour T-shirt were found on the body. The idea was to prevent identification of the deceased," Gaonkar said.

Though police are clueless about whether the deceased is a Goan or migrant, Gaonkar said that clues pointed to the possibility that he belonged to the labour class. "His soles had cracked skin which suggests that he was used to hard manual labour," he said.

The Maina Curtorim police have registered an offence under Sections 302 (murder) and 201 (causing disappearance of evidence) of IPC and investigations are in progress. (TNN)