Police on Wednesday arrested mason Md Shamim, 30, for allegedly murdering his live-in partner Rekha Tigga, 27, and her five-year-old daughter in August last year.

Shamim was arrested in the morning from Pithoria, around 20km from Upper Kocha in Peepartoli under Argora police station area, where the bodies of Rekha and her daughter Priyanshi Tigga were found.

The police said that Shamim, Rekha and her daughter stayed at a rented house at Upper Kocha owned by Bhairo Tigga. Bhairo noticed Rekha and the child gone on August 21, 2019. Shamim was also nowhere to be seen.

A policeman said that on August 2, 2019, Shamim had reportedly told Bhairo that they no longer wanted to stay. The landlord did not sense anything amiss then.

But on September 1, the landlord noticed a swarm of flies and a foul smell near the cesspit of his house. That made him suspicious. He informed neighbours and Argora police.

When the cesspit slab was removed, the decomposed bodies, almost reduced to skeletons, were recovered.

Shamim was always the main suspect in the case, police said.

“Shamim strangled Rekha and her daughter because he got fed up with the relationship,” Argora OC Binod Kumar said.

Rekha, a widow from Dandai in Ratu, worked as a construction labourer when she came in touch with mason Shamim. She and her daughter started living with Shamim in a rented house at Upper Kocha sometime in 2018.

OC Kumar added that Shamim also has a 25-year-old wife and two sons, aged five and two-and-a-half years. “He was in a parallel relationship with Rekha.”

Body found

The police on Wednesday recovered the body of a man from Amravati under Chutia police station area in the heart of the capital. Police found no injury mark on the unidentified body. It is being suspected that alcoholism caused the death.

‘Beaten up’

Dinkar Kacchap, a tribal resident of Sitaramdera, on Wednesday told East Singhbhum DC Ravi Shankar Shukla that he was beaten up by a group of people, including women, at Baridih Basti in Sidhgora on Tuesday when he went to help a tribal woman involved in a legal dispute with Shankar Dayal over the possession of a house.