Kolkata, Oct 18 (IANS): A man who has been arrested in connection with the rape and murder case of a woman in her 20s at Krishnanagar in West Bengal's Nadia district was on Thursday sent to seven-day police custody by a court, an official said.

The accused, Rahul Basu, however, has constantly claimed that he is innocent, adding he was not even in Krishnanagar when the incident took place.

The half-charred and semi-nude body of the victim was recovered on Wednesday morning from a place near the Nadia district police superintendent's office.

The recovery of the body created tensions in the area.

Later, on the basis of the complaints of the family members of the victim, the police arrested Rahul Basu on Wednesday afternoon.

Meanwhile, the post-mortem of the body was conducted at the state-run College of Medicine and JNM Hospital at Kalyani in Nadia district on Thursday.

After conducting the judicial inquest in the presence of a judicial magistrate, the forensic specialist Soumyajyoti Bandopadhyay, who conducted the autopsy, told mediapersons that whether the rape had been conducted before the murder or not would be ascertained after some further chemical examinations.

"Unless those chemical examinations are conducted it is not possible for us to say anything in the matter. A body which has been charred excretes various fluids in natural ways. We have preserved that," Bandopadhyay said.

However, he at the same time confirmed that the burn injuries on the body and face of the victim’s body and face were anti-mortem in nature.

"This means that she was charred when she was alive," he explained.

Meanwhile, the victim’s mother claimed that she and her other family members doubted that the accused was not the only person who had done the crime, and he definitely had partners in the crime.

"We want a central-agency probe into the matter and in probability we will be approaching the Calcutta High Court soon for a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) enquiry," she said on Thursday.