BENGALURU: A day after a 70-year-old woman's body was found chopped up and stuffed into a drum, a man who knew the victim was arrested in connection with the killing, police officials informed on Monday. To briefly recall, the body of 70-year-old Sushilamma was discovered by the authorities after local residents complained of a foul smell emanating from a barrel found from a vacant plot near an abandoned house on Sunday evening. 

The deceased, Sushilamma, and her daughter were living in a rented flat in Nisarga Layout in KR Puram. Sushilamma used to often visit temples and sometimes even went to her son's house so the daughter initially did not suspect anything amiss when her mother did not return home on Saturday night, according to the police.

The accused, identified as Dinesh (40), has been arrested in connection with the murder that took place on Saturday, according to an officer quoted in a PTI report. 

During interrogation, the accused confessed to his crime and told interrogators that since he was in debt, he decided to eliminate the elderly woman and steal her jewellery. On the pretext of taking her to a temple, he took her to his house and strangled her, a senior police officer said.

"After killing her, he took all her gold jewellery ornaments to a jeweller. Then he got to know that except for a pair of earrings, everything else was not real but 'rolled gold' (gold plated). To hide his crime, he chopped up her body into parts and stuffed it inside a drum at a vacant plot near an abandoned house," the officer said.

With inputs from PTI.