Man arrested for murdering daily wager, transferring Rs 1L from her a/c

Dumka: A 22-year-old man was arrested on Monday in Dumka district for allegedly strangling a 28-year-old woman to death and transferring Rs 1 lakh from her account on Feb 10, police said.

The accused was identified as Jageshwar Marandi.The body of Sarodhani Hembram, a daily wager from Tikapahari village, was recovered from a well in Bagjhopa village on Monday.Police said that on Feb 10, Marandi lured the woman to a secluded spot under some pretext, snatched her phone, and demanded the password of her online payment app. When she refused, he thrashed her brutally, transferred the money to his account, and then killed her before dumping her body in a nearby well.

He, however, continued living normally after the murder. After Sarodhani didn’t return home, her family launched a search and filed a missing person’s report at Muffassil police station on Feb 20.A technical probe revealed the suspicious transfer from Sarodhani’ account on Feb 10, leading to Marandi’s arrest and confession after interrogation.Officer-in-charge (OC) of Muffassil police station, Lawrenceia Kerketta, told TOI, “Acting on information from the accused, we retrieved the decomposed body from the well and sent it for post-mortem examination on Tuesday. Charges of murder and tampering of evidence have been registered against him.”