Bareilly, Nov 29 Murders of eight women in the past few months, in a similar pattern, have created panic among people and anxiety for police in this Uttar Pradesh district.
All the victims were aged between 35 and 60 years and were strangled to death with a saree/chunari, said officials.
Seven of these murders were reported from different villages under Shahi police station limits.
The most recent one was reported from Sheeshgarh police station on November 26.
Bareilly ADG PC Meena, along with IG (Range) Rakesh Singh, visited the crime spot and directed officials to work out the cases at the earliest.
He asked them to do the crime mapping of incidents and analyse the crime pattern to nab the assailants.
"It is still not clear whether these murders are interconnected or not. I am also not sure whether it is a work of one person or different people. But residents suspect the involvement of a psychopath in the region," said ASP (crime) Mukesh Pratap Singh.
He said three of these eight cases were solved with three people being arrested in the matter while police teams were deployed to crack the remaining cases.
ASP Mukesh Pratap Singh, however, added that an advisory was issued to villagers to not allow women to go out of their home alone and step out in groups of three-four, if necessary.
They had been asked to follow this advisory till the police reach any conclusion behind these incidents. This advisory also stands for daytime as all these murders happened between 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. with women working in the field or at deserted places.
"Women in villages of Shahi police station fear to walk out of home alone and work in the fields. Now, the murder of a woman in the same pattern was reported from a village under adjoining Sheeshgarh police station limits on Sunday," said a local resident.
Urmila, 55, wife of one Ved Prakash of Jagdishpur village of Sheeshgarh, had gone out to collect fodder for cattle around 12 noon and did not return home.
The woman's body was later found lying near the field of one Dori Lal around 500 metres from the village.
Earlier, last year, three women aged between 60 and 64 years were killed in December in Barabanki district.
After two months of investigation, the police worked out the cases with the arrest of a 24-year-old youth Amrendra Kumar Rawat.
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