Agartala, 11 June

A 26-year-old man was allegedly murdered and his body stored in an ice-cream freezer in Tripura in a love triangle gone wrong, police said on Wednesday.

The victim was in a relationship with a 20-year-old woman. On the other side, the woman's cousin wanted to be with her, West Tripura's SP Kiran Kumar said.

The couple was not talking to each other after a recent fight, and the cousin got an inkling, he said.

He plotted a well-designed plan to kill the boyfriend, and invited him to the house of a relative in South Indiranagar in West Tripura on June 8, police said.

The cousin, who is an MBBS graduate from Bangladesh, strangulated him to death with the help of three other persons present there, they said.

Then they stuffed the body in a trolley bag. The next day, the cousin called his parents, who live in Gandacherra, to come to Agartala and take the trolley bag with them, police said.

"Accordingly, his parents came to Agartala with a car and took the trolley bag to Gandacherra. They concealed the body in an ice-cream freezer in their shop," the SP said.

The cousin wanted to physically exploit the woman, who recently lost her father. He knew that he couldn't do that till the boyfriend was in the scene, so he conspired to kill him, he said.

The accused was a frequent visitor to the woman's house in Bankumari in the East Agartala police station area, he added.

Police began an investigation after the victim's family lodged a missing person's complaint, and the cousin was the first person to be arrested, the officer said.

"Based on his confession, the body of the victim was retrieved from the freezer on Wednesday. After a post-mortem examination, the body was handed over to the victim's family," he said.

A total of six persons, including the cousin's parents, were arrested, Kumar said.