A police officer shows the photo of a woman killed in Greater Noida. A police officer shows the photo of a woman killed in Greater Noida.

It has all the trappings of a murder mystery, albeit one that hasn't been solved. There have been at least seven killings, all women, in the last couple of months in Greater Noida. Their mutilated bodies have been found dumped along the road or in open fields. And yet, neither the victims nor the culprits have been identified by the police so far.

In the latest case on March 3, the partially disfigured body of a woman in her 20s was found in a drain in an open field opposite ATS Society in the Kasna area. According to the police, the woman had been allegedly raped and murdered somewhere else before being dumped here. "There was no trace of blood near the body. We also did not find any mobile phone or personal belongings, and as a result she could not be identified," said police inspector Rajinder Singh Yadav.

"The victim's clothes were torn and it looked like she had been raped. It was found by a person who had come to the field for his morning ablution," recalled Brijesh Kumar, a resident of Dadri, who often visited ATS Society.

On February 12, another woman was found dead and dumped on the roadside in the nearby Kot Gaon village. "According to postmortem reports, this woman was not raped. We have sent some details to Agra for further analysis," said sub-inspector Narender Kumar Sharma.

A few kilometres away in Raipur village, another burnt body of a woman was found near the road. "The murder happened on the intervening night of February 14-15 and because the woman was found charred, we have not been able to identify her either," informed Rajinder Singh of the Ajaibpur police station.

Asked why so many bodies have been found in the area and no headway made so far, Singh said, "It is easy for anyone to come from far and dump bodies here at night. In this chowki, we have to look after six villages with just six officers," adds Singh. He further emphasised that most people in this area have turned rich overnight after selling their land to construction companies. "It makes it easier for them to cover tracks after a killing or maybe two."

In February in Dankaur, another woman was found dead and her face smashed with a boulder. According to sources, the woman was allegedly raped too. In another case, the severed torso of an unidentified woman was found in a drain near Sector 35 on January 7. Adding to the woes of the police, on January 2, another was found dead near Sector 135 along with the Noida-Greater Noida Expressway. On December 24, an eight-month pregnant woman was found shot dead in a park near Sector 55. In none of these cases the police have identified any of the deceased or their assassins.