As more chilling details of the 29-year-old Bengaluru woman’s gruesome murder emerge with each passing day, her estranged husband Hemanth Das on Sep 24 alleged the victim, Mahalakshmi was in an illicit relationship with another man who could have committed the heinous crime.
Das told reporters that the victim was staying with one Ashraf, who originally hailed from Uttarakhand and worked in a salon in Bengaluru. He claimed that he had filed a complaint against the suspect Ashraf at the Nelamangala police station some months ago.
“After the complaint, it was mandated that he must not come to Bengaluru. But I don't know where else they went to meet," Das said.
Bengaluru was shocked on Sep 21 after at least 59 pieces of Mahalakshmi’s body were found stuffed inside a refrigerator at her one-bedroom apartment in the city’s Malleshwaram town.
The incident was reported after Mahalakshmi’s neighbors complained of a foul smell coming from her apartment. Her mother and sister later opened the door of her flat only to find Mahalakshmi’s maggot-infested body inside the refrigerator.
Das said that he came to know about the illicit relationship between the two in May 2023. Mahalakshmi and Hemanth were married for six years and had a four-year-old daughter. However, the couple had been living separately for the past nine months due to domestic disputes.
"Mahalakshmi and Ashraf had an extra-marital affair which led to the tensions between us. I discovered it somewhere in May last year. For the last nine months, we lived in separation and I do not know whether she was in contact with the man,” Das said.
“When she separated, Ashraf was also told not to meet her but I did not know if he met her. For the first four months, my daughter stayed with Mahalakshmi and later she lived with me in Nelamangala,” Das added.
Das also said she visited Nelamangala a month ago and met their daughter. “She was relatively calm and did not talk much about her life or anything else,” Das added.
He visited her estranged wife in July and stayed with her for a few days in another house, Das said, adding that Mahalakshmi went incommunicado since Sep 4.
Mahalakshmi used to work in a mall in Malleshwaram while Das works in a hermitage away from the city.
Meanwhile, Bengaluru police Commissioner B Dayananda on Sep 23 said the police have identified the prime suspect in the crime. "It is being investigated from all angles. The prime suspect has been identified and efforts are underway to arrest him," B Dayananda told reporters.
“He is not a Bengaluru resident. We can't share more information at this point as it may help the accused,” he added.
Karnataka Home Minister G Parameshwara on Sep 23 said that the police have collected a lot of information regarding the woman's murder.
Parameshwara added that the Bengaluru police suspect a man reportedly from West Bengal to be behind the murder but more evidence is needed to confirm his role. “The police have collected a lot of information, a lot of clues. Unless we collect more information we can't really say. He is from West Bengal,” Parameshwara was quoted as saying.
Regarding the government's measures to enhance the safety of women, Parameshwara said,“We have already taken a lot of measures for women's safety in Bengaluru. We are very careful about it. We have installed CCTV cameras at places where a lot of women go.”
A police officer from the Nelamangala Police Station was recently quoted as saying that Mahalakshmi had filed a complaint against Hemant Das in February this year alleging that he had assaulted her. In response, Das had also filed a complaint against her, saying she was having an affair with another man. The police had taken a Non-Cognizable Report (NCR) and their family members had tried to defuse the fight between the couple.
The recent gruesome murder is a stark reminder of the brutal murder of Shraddha Walker allegedly by her live-in partner Aftab Poonawalla on May 18, 2022, at Mehrauli in Delhi. Aftab Poonawala 28, allegedly strangled Shraddha Walkar and sawed her body into 35 pieces which he kept in a 300-liter fridge for almost three weeks at his residence before dumping them across Delhi.
