Man accused of killing girlfriend, cutting up and cooking her body in alleged bid "to hide the evidence"

New Delhi — An Indian man has been accused of killing his girlfriend, chopping her body into at least a dozen pieces, boiling some of her remains and then stuffing them into plastic bags for later disposal, police said.

Police in India's financial capital Mumbai arrested Manoj Sahani, 56, Wednesday on charges of killing his 32-year-old live-in partner Saraswati Vaidya.

Police said the couple, who had lived in their Mumbai apartment for three years, had an argument about three to four days earlier after which Sahani alleged killed Vaidya.

Authorities were alerted Wednesday by the couple's neighbors, who complained of a foul smell coming from the apartment. When police reached the apartment, they said they found body parts stuffed into plastic bags.

"When we reached the house and opened the door, we understood it was a case of murder and the suspect tried to hide the evidence," Jayant Bajbale, a Deputy Commissioner with Mumbai Police, told reporters.

The police said in a statement that Sahani had, "bought a tree-cutter and chopped the body. He cooked the body parts in a pressure cooker. He stuffed them in plastic bags with the intention of exhuming them. We recovered 12-13 body parts from the spot."

Indian TV news channels aired video of police removing evidence from the apartment in plastic bags.

 Sahani was being questioned about the motive of the alleged murder.

The case was similar to the murder of a 26-year-old woman last year in India's capital. Aftab Ameen Poonawala was arrested and accused of killing his live-in partner Shraddha Walker and chopping her body into dozens of pieces, storing them in a refrigerator and disposing of them in a forest over time.

Rekha Sharma, who chairs the Indian National Commission for Women, said such crimes appeared to be increasing.

"I have seen that people are now taking clues from past incidents, which are very gruesome, which are heinous," Sharma told India's national ANI news agency.

In:
• India
• Murder
• Mumbai