Silchar, Sept. 13 -- A 23-year-old tea garden worker from Assam's Dibrugarh district was arrested for allegedly raping and strangling a 22-year-old woman over an alleged illicit affair, police said on Sunday.

The woman, who went missing on Friday morning, was recovered from an abandoned pit in Chabua area on Saturday afternoon, and police detained the accused later.

"As per the initial investigation, the woman was sexually assaulted and strangled to death before her body was thrown into an abandoned pit," officers said, adding that the accused was known to her and they were allegedly having an affair.

The woman, a mother of a two-year-old boy, separated from her husband nearly a year ago and was staying separately in the Chabua area of...