In a grisly incident, a man has allegedly murdered his live-in partner and virtually entombed the body under a marble platform at his residence in Bhopal.

The body of the woman, who hailed from Bankura in West Bengal, was exhumed in the wee hours of Friday after a six-hour effort.

The accused Udyan Das (32) strangulated Akanksha (28), his live-in partner, to death, stuffed the body in an iron box and then constructed a marble platform over it to hide the crime. The accused poured in cement inside an iron box after stuffing the body. He then put the box inside another bigger box and again filled cement in it. These boxes were then covered with a marble platform.

"We exhumed the body from under the platform at around 4 AM with the help of drilling machines. It has been sent for postmortem and further interrogation is underway," said Govindpura City Superintendent of Police Virendra Mishra.

The accused poured in cement inside an iron box after stuffing the body. He then put the box inside another bigger box and again filled cement in it. These boxes were then covered with a marble platform.

The incident came to fore yesterday when West Bengal police arrived in the state capital in search of Akanksha following a complaint lodged by her father Shivendra Sharma after the family lost touch with her. According to police, Udyan had befriended the victim on a social media site.

When questioned, Udyan admitted to killing her in a fit of rage in the last week of December 2016, after they had a dispute over an issue.

Akanksha's father claimed that his daughter had left home in June 2016 seeking job. She was in touch with her parents over phone, but it stopped in December last year and since then remained in contact only through text messages. She told her parents in a message that she was working in the US.

Suspecting her activities, the family traced the phone number to Saket Nagar in Bhopal and lodged a complaint with Bankura police on January 5. The West Bengal police kept an eye on Udyan's phone records and detained him .