Dismembered body: Grisly discovery sickens Garden

The woman’s body parts were found in several different spots.

KARACHI:

They found her in 10 pieces in four different places.

The body parts were cut into ten, neatly chopped, skinned, wrapped in yellow and blue plastic bags, and scattered in Jamshed Town.

They surfaced over a period of three days within a two-kilometre radius of the Aga Khan Jamaatkhana in Garden East. “The suspect was trying to fool the police or trying to get rid of the body easily so it could not be identified,” coolly remarked Soldier Bazaar Additional SHO Sarfaraz Ali.

The jigsaw puzzle

The lower abdomen and knees were found in a dumpster near the Aga Khan Women Hospital on March 10 by ragpickers. The next day, residents found the head and neck in plastic bags near Al-Fatima Phase II Apartments. On March 12, the chest and other vital organs were found near the Adamjee Government Science College and a few hours later, her arms and legs were found near Nawab Bahadur Yar Jan Road.

It was difficult to breathe at the Civil hospital morgue where her body was on display for forensic experts. They had dipped her slender fingers in black ink for fingerprints. She was wearing white glass bangles. The police claim that some parts were found wrapped in a man’s white corduroy jeans and a woman’s cotton shirt with light brown and silver embroidery.

The medico-legal officer said that there was something odd about the arms. “The skin was scraped off,” said MLO Karar Abbasi. “We think that she had a tattoo or someone’s name was written on her arm so the suspect removed it with a sharp object.”

According to Abbasi’s assistant, Shakeel, who was carefully disentangling her toe and sending it for a DNA sample, the parts belonged to the same woman and she was in her early 40s. The intestines, kidneys, liver were kept on a separate table with her chest. “In the nine years that I have worked here, I have never seen a body where the flesh was so neatly stripped off the bone,” he said. “I have seen a body cut into 17 pieces but never have I seen a woman’s […] chopped and skinned.”

The MLO and police believe that a butcher’s knife might have been used. Her face did not have any bruises. “She had a pale complexion and her hair fell over her shoulders,” said an officer. “She must have been strangled.”

No missing woman complaints have been filed. Police assume she was killed six hours before she was dismembered.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 13^th, 2012.