PANAJI - Another partially decomposed body of a middle-aged woman was found in Goa’s Porvorim, a few kilometres from here, taking the total number of women found murdered in the state to four over the last three days.

The latest victim’s body was discovered next to a primary school in Porvorim Tuesday evening. Even as the post mortem of the other three dead bodies would be carried out later Wednesday, police suspect that all the victims were murdered.

While only one out of the four deceased could be identified, in some cases the facial features are charred, making identification difficult.

Goa police have meanwhile made light of queries related to the safety of women in the state.

Superintendent of Police (CID) Atmaram Deshpande had replied to a woman journalist during a press conference: “Women in Goa are as safe as you are standing in my office - full of your male colleagues.”

The four suspected murders and the similarity in attempts made to char the face of the victims comes on the heels of a shocking serial killing saga in Goa, when Mahanand Naik, a rickshaw driver, was arrested for strangling 16 women over the last 10 years.

Asked about the possibility of another serial killing in the current spate of murders, Deshpande said: “We are not ruling out anything at the moment. But it is too early to call these serial killings.”

Of the four people killed, one has been identified as a 16-year-old girl residing on the outskirts of Panaji. The other two, in their early and mid-twenties, whose bodies were found in remote locations in Khorjuem, 25 km from here and in Verna in South Goa, have not been identified yet.

Crimes against women in Goa have hit the media spotlight in the last couple of years, with the murder of British teenager Scarlett Keeling and the mysterious death of Russian teenager Elena Sukhonova earlier this year.

Alleged serial killer Mahanand Naik’s murder rampage, where he strangled 16 women with their own dupattas, were also elaborately reported in the media, as was Home Minister Ravi Naik’s subsequent statement that “women should no longer wear dupattas on their churidars” because Mahanand had used them to strangle his victims.