Mumbai, Mar 21 (IANS): The Mumbai woman, Rimple Jain - who was arrested for chopping her widowed mother Veena Jain's body into pieces - created an impression for nearly three months that she was 'alive' and had gone for treatment to her native place Kanpur, official sources said.

This and other aspects came out during her ongoing custodial investigations by the team probing the sensational case which came to light last Tuesday (March 14) stunning Mumbaikars.

Rimple - whose relations with her mother were strained - has stuck to her earlier version that she did not kill Veena, but merely chopped off her body into pieces and stored them in plastic bags in a cupboard at home.

She has claimed to the police investigators that her mother died under natural circumstances, allegedly due to a fall on December 27. But since she was scared of getting the blame for it, she resorted to a web of lies and deceit to fool the relatives and the neighbours.

The Ibrahim Kasam Chawl, where the body parts were discovered after the victim's brother Sureshchandra Phulchand Porwal complained to Kalachowki Police, is situated adjacent to main road in a thickly populated residential-cum-commercial locality of south-central Mumbai, with public movement almost round-the-clock.

This made it difficult for her to dispose of her mother's body parts without arousing doubts among their relatives or the neighbourhood.

Rimple also revealed she went and bought an electric marble-cutter from a nearby hardware shop - where a police team took her last week to verify her claim - and started cutting Veena's body the very next day.

When some people around casually inquired after her mother, Rimple told them that "she has gone to Kanpur for medical treatment," and the matter rested, even as she made frantic efforts to dispose of Veena's body parts.

Hoping to misguide the snoopy neighbourhood, Rimple would walk up and down the common corridor, pretending to speak to her 'mom' on the mobile, asking her loudly "how are you", "how is the treatment going on," etc. so the neighbours could hear the 'conversation'.

The police are attempting to ascertain the exact motives why she did not inform the family, relatives or neighbours of Veena's death and resorted to a macabre act of cutting, chopping and preserving her body parts at home till they had started decomposing badly.

To ward off the stench, she used to spray a lot of room fresheners and perfumes at home, but despite all her attempts to hide it, the whole crime finally erupted in the open last Tuesday.