The Yokohama District Public Prosecutors Office on Friday indicted a former boyfriend of Asahi Okazaki, 20, whose body was found at his house in the city of Kawasaki, Kanagawa Prefecture.
The office in the Kanagawa capital charged 27-year-old Hideyuki Shirai, of no fixed occupation, with damaging and abandoning a corpse, without specifying whether he acknowledged responsibility. Kanagawa police will continue investigating the case.
According to the indictment and other sources, Shirai burned her body between around Dec. 20 last year and April 2 this year, put it in a bag and hid it under the kitchen at his house.
Okazaki went missing last December. Her body was discovered when police searched his house last month on suspicion that he had violated the law against stalking.
The body in the bag was partly skeletonized and seems to have been burned intensively. This indicates that at least a month had passed since her death, although the cause was not clear.
According to Okazaki's relatives, she repeatedly consulted police, saying she was harassed and stalked by Shirai. The prefectural police have set up a team to examine their handling of her case before and after she went missing.
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