A woman’s decomposing body was discovered inside a plastic drum on a platform at the Yesvantpur Junction railway station in Bengaluru on Wednesday, January 4. The Karnataka Railway Police said that the body appears to be that of a woman aged about 30 years, who is believed to have been strangulated with a dupatta. She had been wearing a black and white kurta, white leggings, a white dupatta and a toe ring, the police found. The woman was about 5 feet tall, they said. She is yet to be identified. 

The body was found on Wednesday morning when a sweeper at the railway station informed the railway police that a foul smell was emanating from a plastic drum on platform number 1. When the police went and opened the drum, they found the decomposed body of a woman inside, along with a lot of clothes, according to a press release. A case has been registered over the woman’s death at the Bangalore Rural Railway Police Station, Yeshwanthpur, under Sections 302 (murder) and 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of offence) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). 

The body was sent for post-mortem, and remained unidentified as of Wednesday. The police have sought any information regarding the body or any missing person cases registered. A railway police officer said that the woman appeared to have been married, according to India Today. The officer also said that similar plastic drums are often used to transport fish through the station. The drum was reportedly stuffed with clothes on top of the body.

In a similar incident in Andhra Pradesh, a woman’s decomposed body was found stuffed inside a plastic drum at a house in Visakhapatnam’s Madhurawada in December 2022. Police said they identified the killer as the previous tenant of the house Rishi. Rishi admitted to having killed the woman back in May 2021, according to the police, and the body was discovered nearly a year and a half later when the landlord forcibly entered the house to clear the belongings of the previous tenant.