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The only time he spoke to his sister, then a minor, was four years ago. His sister, a tribal who left their Jharkhand village for Delhi with an acquaintance from the village, rarely spoke to the family, making that conversation precious but brief — barely enough to exchange pleasantries. “I asked to speak to her properly, but the call was cut. After that, there was no contact,” he said.
On December 12, the family heard shocking news — the woman, who had gone missing three months ago, was found murdered and stuffed in a suitcase two weeks earlier, and police had arrested Kalista, the acquaintance who brought her to Delhi, along with her husband, Hapur resident Ankit, who goes by one name.
The suitcase was found in a sugarcane field in Hapur, with police claiming the woman was sexually assaulted. The arrests came on a tip from a local.
Police also recovered four mobile phones — including one belonging to the victim — some receipt books and a stick, which they suspect was the murder weapon.
According to Hapur Additional Superintendent of Police Vineet Bhatnagar, the couple ran a domestic help agency.
“The couple killed the woman after Ankit raped her and she threatened to send them to jail. Previously a cloth hawker, Ankit and Kalista, from the same village, realised labour in Jharkhand was cheap and opened the company, Shristi Enterprises, which helped employ house helpers in Delhi-NCR,” he said.
Police said the suspects and their company charged employers large sums for domestic workers, but the money never reached the women employed.
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Ankit allegedly raped the woman after she resisted his sexual advances. When she threatened to report them, the couple killed her, police said. They then allegedly forced a second woman to confess to the murder and recorded her confession.
“They packed the victim in the suitcase, took an auto to a sugarcane field and dumped her there,” the officer said.
Police said the suspects and their company charged employers large sums for domestic workers, but the money never reached the women employed.
According to police, two weeks after the body was found, they began reaching out to nearby police stations — including in the capital Delhi — to help identify the victim. This led them to a missing person’s complaint in Delhi.
“But the Delhi Police had paid no heed to it,” Bhatnagar said.
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Then came the tip that helped change the course of investigation. Police learnt that a Delhi resident had made several rounds of a police station in Delhi, leading them to suspect that he was the complainant.
“It was a Good Samaritan that helped us,” Bhatnagar said. “When our team contacted him, he said his house help — the second woman in the case — was distressed and scared but hesitant to open up. But after some probing, she narrated the entire ordeal.”
That tip helped police identify the woman and zero in on the couple. “During questioning, Ankit told the police he had also sexually assaulted the other woman and filmed the act,” police said.
‘In shock’
Back home, the family – mother, and four siblings — is in shock. According to them, the suspect, Kalista, approached them in 2021 and promised to take the victim, along with another underage girl, to Delhi for a job.
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Belonging to one of Jharkhand’s most vulnerable tribes, the victim’s family were daily wagers, and a job for the daughter seemed a good economic prospect.
Soon, things worsened — phone calls became sparse, the promised money never came, and the family’s contact with the victim was all but severed.
“She (Kalista) used to repeatedly tell us that my sister was safe and would be brought back,” her younger brother, a contract labourer at a steel plant in Goa, told The Indian Express. “Whenever we asked them to bring her home, they would promise to send her, but nothing ever happened.”
Earlier this year, the victim’s father, after years of pleading for his daughter’s return, died.
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“My father waited and waited. He kept asking them to bring her home. He was under constant stress,” he said.
Last week, the family finally learnt what had happened to the victim. “We didn’t believe it. We thought they were lying,” the brother said. “My mother had waited all these years hoping to hear her daughter’s voice again. Now she is in deep shock.”
According to a neighbour, the suspect frequently returned to the village “to flaunt her lifestyle”. “She would talk about food, work and opportunities in Delhi. That’s how she convinced the girls,” he said, calling for a deeper probe into trafficking networks in the area.
Meanwhile, the village head said repeated efforts to track the woman in the past had failed.
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On Monday, the local block development officer visited the victim’s family. But any talk of compensation faces a major hurdle — the absence of bank accounts or identity documents.
“In that case, how will the death certificate be issued, and how will any compensation or benefits be paid to the family,” she asked.
For the family, there is another concern — they lack the money to travel to Delhi to collect the body.
“I’m trying to go back home,” he told The Indian Express. “We’ve been called to Hapur by the police, but even that travel is expensive for us.”
