Solved: India’s Big Suitcase Mystery

Once upon a time, the British sketch comedy show Goodness Gracious Me lampooned the Indian traveler's need for an enormous, teetering pile of giant suitcases. But a string of "suitcase murders" across India shows that the folks back home haven't lost their talent for jugaad (making do).

Starting with Delhi, suitcases with bodies or body parts have been cropping up faster than luggage drops from the Air India carousel, it seems. Just today, two bodies were discovered in suitcases in Shimla (a resort town near Delhi), whle the post mortem conducted on a woman found in a suitcase in Mumbai revealed that the rape-murder victim was pregnant when she was killed.  Last week, another dead woman was found in a suitcase left on Juhu beach.

The murders are all unconnected, by all accounts. Just random tragedies. But it's disturbing to note that they all involve violence against women — a hint at the tensions straining the society as it undergoes a sexual revolution of sorts.