Representative image.

BHUBANESWAR: Sleepy Balikuma village in Dhenkanal district woke to a horrific ‘gangrape and murder’ of a widow at her house on Tuesday. Like infamous Delhi gangrape incident in 2012, the unidentified killers inserted an iron rod in her private part. Police detained two persons suspecting their involvement behind the gory murder.

Police said the 45-year-old widow was alone at home when miscreants entered her shanty at Balikuma village in Kankadahada area in the early hours. Her 13-year-old son was in sleep at a distance outside the home. She had kept the door open for her son as he was sleeping outside. “Her son told us that he saw two men of the locality running from the home around 4 am. He rushed towards the home after hearing her screams. Based on his statement, we detained two persons and are interrogating them,” SP (Dhenkanal) Basant Panigrahi told TOI.

Given the brutal nature of murder, police suspect the accused might have nurtured serious grudge on her. “We found severe injury marks in her private organ only. Prima facie, there were no other injury marks elsewhere on the body. She must have died due to acute pain after the handle of a roti-making appliance was pierced in her private organ,” Panigrahi said. “We are trying to find out whether she had any hostility with anyone,” Panigrahi added. Police said the woman’s husband died in road accident three years ago. She had been eking out living by selling forest produces in the local market.

This was second such inhuman rape and murder in Odisha after the Nirbhaya incident . In June 2013, a visually challenged girl was raped and murdered at Puri. A man, who was arrested subsequently, killed her by inserting an iron rod in her private organ.

