Berhampur: The mystery surrounding an 18-month-old case of a missing 24-year-old man might get resolved as police on Tuesday recovered a human skeleton from an abandoned house on the presimes of a defunct spinning mill at Aska in Ganjam district. The family members of the missing, A Shankar Patra of Narsinghpur, claimed it was his skeleton, saying they identified it with his clothes and shoes lying beside the remains.The skeleton was sent to the forensic department of MKCG Medical College here on Wednesday for DNA profiling, said Damodar Bihari, inspector-in-charge of Kotinada police station. “We will confirm if the skeleton is of the missing person only after getting the DNA report,” he said.Shankar, a grocery shop owner, had been missing since Nov 29, 2024. The family members had lodged a missing person report on Dec 1 in Kotinada police station after they failed to locate him during an intense search. Police said they registered a missing person case and searched for him.His family members alleged that his friends, who met him on the fateful day, might have killed him and dumped the body in the abandoned house to destroy the evidence. “He had called some of his friends to meet on Nov 29, 2024. He, however, did not return home after meeting them, and his mobile phone was also found switched off. His friends did not reply satisfactorily about his whereabouts,” said his father A Laxman Patra.The IIC said the family members, however, did not lodge any formal murder complaint. “As of now, we have registered an unnatural death case and started an investigation,” he said.