In a horrifying incident in Kerala, a headless body of a woman was found in an isolated area near Thiruvananthapuram. The body is suspected to be of a 33-year-old Latvian woman, Liga Skromane, who went missing in March. (ANI image)

In a horrifying incident in Kerala, a headless body of a woman was found in an isolated area near the capital city of Thiruvananthapuram. The body is suspected to be of a 33-year-old Latvian woman, Liga Skromane, who went missing in March. Although the victim has been identified by her sister and friend, a detailed forensic examination would be done to scientifically confirm this. As per reports, the decomposed body of Skromane was hanging upside down from a tree, while the head of the body was found lying away from the rest of it, in a marshy spot.

On Friday, fishermen found the body in a highly decomposed state and alerted the police. The next day, Skromane’s sister and a friend arrived and identified the body from her dress and the hair. The police will conduct an autopsy, which will be followed by a DNA test that is likely to be done at the city-based Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology. After Skromane disappeared last month, her husband Andrew Jordan and sister had appealed Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan as well as Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj for helping trace her.

Skromane had come to Kerala along with her sister Ilzie for ayurvedic treatment at a hospital in the capital outskirts in Thiruvananthapuram following complaints of depression. She, however, went missing on March 14 and was last reported to have taken an auto-rickshaw ride to the famed tourist destination at Kovalam. She was travelling without a passport or mobile phone at the time. Her husband Andrew and her sister had printed her posters and distributed them around to help them lead to any clue. The Kerala Police had also launched a detailed probe to locate her but failed. Empty bottles, cigarettes and a lighter have been recovered from the place where the body was found.

Cases of crimes against women of foreign origin have surfaced in recent times. In 2017, a 28-year-old Irish woman was killed on her second trip to Goa. She was on a ‘backpack’ trip and had celebrated Holi before she was raped, murdered and left unclothed with her face badly smashed up. In 2008, 15-year-old Scarlett Keeling was raped and killed in Goa. However, in one of the most shocking Verdicts, the Children’s court of Goa acquitted Samson D’Souza and Placido Carvalho, the two men accused of the charges raping and killing Scarlett Keeling.