At first, there was little for investigators to work with. A red trolley suitcase abandoned in an unreserved railway compartment, a woman’s dismembered and decomposing body inside it, and a train that had travelled hundreds of kilometres before anyone discovered what the luggage contained.

By the end of August, that suitcase had led investigators from a railway platform in Agra through hundreds of CCTV recordings to suburban trains and an autorickshaw in Chennai, then to a locked tiled-roof house in Guduvanchery suburbs, and eventually, more than 2,000 kilometres away to Manipur, where police arrested a young couple in their early twenties suspected of killing the woman.

The victim was identified as Hayathun Nisha, 38, an Odisha native who had been living in Guduvanchery, South of Chennai city, and working at a private firm. Police suspect she was killed by Manik Uddin Laskar, 22, after a relationship between them deteriorated over her demand that he marry her, said a senior officer familiar with his interrogation.

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Laskar and his wife, Bhagabati Majhi, were arrested in Kashimpur in Manipur’s Jiribam district on Saturday.

The investigation began on August 5, when passengers aboard the Tamil Nadu Express noticed a foul smell coming from a seemingly abandoned red suitcase in a general compartment after the train reached Agra. Government Railway Police officers opened it and found the headless, dismembered remains of a woman.

There was no immediately obvious way to identify either the woman or whoever had placed the suitcase aboard the train. Investigators turned, instead, to the journey the luggage had made.

Over 350 CCTV recordings scanned

Working with Tamil Nadu police, the Agra Railway Police, Chennai Government Railway Police and the Railway Protection Force began examining CCTV recordings from Chennai Central. Investigators eventually scrutinised hundreds of recordings — more than 350, according to one account — and found images of a man and a woman carrying what appeared to be the same red trolley suitcase through the station and onto the Tamil Nadu Express.

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The footage provided the first substantial trail. The pair, the officer said, had not travelled with the suitcase. They left it aboard the train and got off before its departure. Cameras then captured them walking towards Park station, taking a suburban EMU and getting off at Guduvanchery, before leaving in an autorickshaw.

Investigators effectively began running that journey backwards. More than 200 cameras in and around Guduvanchery were examined as police reconstructed the pair’s movements. The trail eventually led to a rented house near Mosque Street — also referred to in reports as Masuthi (masjid) Street — where investigators believed the suspects and Nisha had been staying.

Body parts in cooking vessel

The house was locked. Police broke it open and searched the premises. Inside, the officer said, they found additional human remains, believed to be Nisha’s, in a large cooking vessel. Reports from the investigation said three people — a man and two women — had been staying at the property.

By then, the case had changed fundamentally. What had begun as the discovery of an unidentified body aboard a long-distance train now had a suspected crime scene, a victim and possible perpetrators. Police identified the principal suspects as Laskar, from Assam’s Cachar district, and his wife Majhi, from Odisha. The couple had disappeared.

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Special teams began tracking them through various means, including Call Data Records, (CDRs) across states. The search ended on August 29 in Kashimpur, in Jiribam district of Manipur, where the Guduvanchery police, assisted by local personnel, arrested Laskar and Majhi. They were subsequently brought to Tambaram for interrogation. It was during that questioning, police sources said, that investigators obtained their first account of a possible motive.

Laskar allegedly told investigators that he and Nisha had been in a relationship for about six months. According to the account he gave police, tensions grew when Nisha began pressing him to marry her, resulting in repeated quarrels. Investigators suspect one such confrontation at the Guduvanchery house culminated in her killing.

Police allege that Laskar subsequently dismembered Nisha’s body and shaved her head. Parts of her remains were placed in the trolley suitcase that investigators say he and his wife carried all the way to Chennai Central, leaving it aboard a train bound for Delhi – effectively putting hundreds of kilometres between the crime scene and the eventual discovery of the body.

Other remains, police say, were left behind at the house. Some details of what happened inside the Guduvanchery property remain under investigation, and accounts emerging during the probe have contained discrepancies, including over the precise handling and disposal of the remains. Nisha’s head has also been reported missing.