The bodies of two unidentified young women have been recovered from the Kumari river in Purulia district in 48 hours.

On Thursday afternoon, the body of an unknown woman was found floating on the river under the jurisdiction of Manbazar police station.

Biswajit Mahato, a resident, said local people had gone to the riverside following the stench of rotting flesh and the body of a woman, wearing jeans and a kurta, was found.

“The woman was not from our locality,” he said.

The police sent the body for autopsy but its report is yet to come.

On Wednesday, local people had found the body of another unknown woman on the bed of the Kumari. The spot is under the jurisdiction of Barabazar police station and 30km from the area where the second woman’s body was found.

The police said the body was partially buried and had injury marks on the head and in other parts. The primary autopsy report suggested the woman, aged between 20 and 22, had been strangulated at least 24 hours before the body was recovered.

None from the locality, around 17km from the Bengal-Jharkhand border, was able to identify the body.

“We have also sent photographs of the body, in jeans and a top, along with a dupatta, to neighbouring police stations in Jharkhand. But no information has been received yet,” said an investigating officer.

The police said they were exploring whether the deceased were from Jharkhand. “They might have been murdered somewhere else and their bodies were dumped here,” said a police officer in Purulia.

District police chief Abhijit Banerjee said: “We are probing the case seriously.”

The back-to-back discovery of the bodies created panic among people of the locality.

Purulia BJP MP Jyotirmoy Singh Mahato claimed that Bengal had become a state of horror for women.

“The list of heinous crimes against women since the R.G. Kar Medical College incident has been becoming big rapidly,” he said.

Trinamool Congress’s Purulia district chief Soumen Belthoria said the government was keen to stop such incidents and was fully committed to the protection of women in the state.