Five days after a skeleton was recovered from a drum inside a flat in the Baguiati area in North 24 Parganas, Bidhannagar Police has arrested a 36-year-old man from Thane in Maharashtra.

The skeleton of a woman was recovered on Tuesday (November 14) from a plastic drum kept inside a flat that was closed for nearly two years. Homeopathy doctor Gopal Mukherjee, the owner of the flat had rented out to a Nepalese couple, in their 30s, in 2018. In 2021, the couple moved to Nepal but they continued to pay the rent for a few months and later stopped it, according to police. On not receiving the rent for a few months, the owner got the flat opened for cleaning when he found the skeleton in a sealed plastic drum, police had said.

According to sources in the police, the arrested man, identified as Amit Damai was a close acquaintance of the couple and had helped them to get the flat on rent. He was arrested on Friday.

“The man (Damai) was a close acquaintance of the couple who stayed in the house. The identity of the woman is not being revealed for the sake of the investigation,” a police officer involved in the probe said.

Police officers involved in the investigation said that though they have not been able to ascertain the motive of the murder, Damai’s arrest would help them solve the mystery of the woman’s skeleton.

“The skeleton is of a woman and it seems that she died at least five months ago. Prima facie, it seems that after the murder the body was dumped in the drum packed in a plastic bag,” added the officer.