Neighbor Suffocates 21-Year-Old Woman To Death To Steal Her Jewelry, Dumps Body In Deserted Area

A man has been arrested after he suffocated a 21-year-old woman to death and then buried the body in a relative's land. The accused told police that he killed the woman to steal her jewelry.

Subeera Farhat went missing from town in the southern Indian state of Kerala on March 10. The accused, Mohammad Anwar, was her neighbor. Authorities said the man killed Farhat and then buried her body in a deserted plot near a laterite quarry. He then took part in the search operations to deceive the cops.

Police exhumed the body and arrested Anwar on Wednesday. When questioned, the accused confessed to suffocating Farhat to death. He said the mask that the girl wore helped him suffocate her easily, the New Indian Express reported.

Police are also investigating whether the victim was sexually assaulted.

"Anwar was in the area during the time the girl went missing. He went out of his house to buy meat, but he returned after a delay of one-and-a-half hours, as per our assumption," K A Suresh Babu, a senior police officer, told the New Indian Express. Anwar was in their list of suspects, he said.

"We focused more on him when we found out that he is involved in criminal cases and that he had financial issues. On questioning, we found some mismatch between his statements and our assumptions. But when we told him that we had decided to remove the piled up soil, he confessed that he killed her," he added.

In March, a 3-year-old boy was strangled to death by his neighbor as part of a human sacrifice ritual. An occultist told the woman she will be able to conceive after performing the ritual. The child's body was found stuffed in a plastic bag and dumped on the roof of a building. The incident took place in New Delhi.