NEW YORK: In yet another shocking crime story involving South Asians, Virginia police found the charred remains of a woman’s body wrapped in a comforter, in a wooded area off a highway in Mecklenburg County, Virginia on Jan 16. The body has been identified as that of 57-year old Vanlata Patel, who was reported missing from Cary, North Carolina, about 90 miles away from where the body was found.

Local newspapers reported that Vanlata’s body was discovered by firefighters who responded to a brush fire in the wooded area off the highway in Mecklenburg County. They saw the body when the fire was put out. Even as investigators identified the body, Vanlata’s son in Canada had reported her missing since she was supposed to board a plane that day to visit him in Canada. The woman’s estranged husband Harish Patel was being questioned by police, although officially he was not a suspect. The local News & Observer said Cary police searched Harish Patel’s apartment at Silverton apartments in northwest Cary.

Harish Patel told police that he had been separated from his wife for a while. He told local TV station WTVD-TV that he had just recently gone through a tumultuous separation and that he had been in court with his estranged wife only two weeks prior to her disappearance. "I saw her in the court. And she was very disturbed," Harish told the channel. "In fact the judge said if she did not stop interfering, he would ask her to leave the court."

Investigators believe the crime may have something to do with a money dispute, having found that the victim and her husband had joint Swiss bank accounts with deposits up to $400,000. Vanlata had recently urged the court to bar her husband from accessing the accounts. Vanlata and Harish Patel had been married for a little over six years and have lived in various states across the US before they moved to Cary.