Delhi’s criminal minds find new ways to hide bodies in plain sight

When property dealer Lalit Jain allegedly hammered his wife Silky to death in north Delhi last December, neither he nor his family knew how to dispose of the body. After deliberation, they reached a consensus — to roll her body down a gorge near Mussoorie and file a missing person complaint with the police.

To avoid attracting suspicion along the 300-km route between Delhi and Mussoorie, Jain allegedly took his sister-in-law and his threeyear-old niece in the car, while Silky’s body lay hidden in the leg space between the front and rear seats.

Jain is not the only one to meticulously plan a crime to avoid getting caught.

An analysis of killers’ behaviour revealed how the criminals took painstaking effort to dispose or hide the bodies of their victims. From living with corpses for weeks, burying them in courtyards or stuffing them in refrigerators, they have done it all.

Nearly 40 murders were reported in Delhi every month this year. The silver lining, if any, is that over the past three years, the number of murders has come down and the rate at which the crimes were solved saw a rise.

Though the police do not maintain a separate data of how killers dispose of their victims, officers say they come across at least two dozen cases every year which leave them shocked.

NEWDELHI: