Mankhurd police and Crime Branch are both investigating the case. (Representational)
Police in Mankhurd in Mumbai have had to take help of a sketch artist in an effort to establish the identity of a woman whose highly-decomposed body was found from a nullah last month but a matching missing complaint record could not be found anywhere in the city, an official said on Sunday.
The body of the woman, in her early 20s as per the post mortem report, was found on August 22 but the checking of scores of CCTV clips from the area as well as probe with people in the vicinity drew a blank about her identity, he said.
"We assumed she was not from here or from Mumbai itself and may have been brought to the city and killed. We found bangles and a mangalsutra on her. We think she was strangled to death some 72 hours before her body, which was stuffed inside a large plastic bag, was found in the nullah," the official said.
He said the help of sketch artist Nitin Yadav, who has helped Mumbai police in several high-profile cases, was taken to draw a representation of the woman, so that it can be shown to people and the case, of murder and destruction of evidence, can move forward, he said.
He added that Mankhurd police and Crime Branch are both investigating the case.