If not for photos of the victim pasted on the Facebook by the alleged mastermind, Arun Kumar, the murder of techie Chandrashekhar Goud would not have been detected, say investigators.
Kumar, who was accused of getting Goud killed through three hired killers and arrested along with the trio, had sent the murder victim’s photos to his sister Sandhya through Facebook. One of the killers, Younus Pasha, had clicked pictures of Goud after eliminating the latter and sent six photos to Kumar through email from Vikarabad in Ranga Reddy district.
Kumar, a Chennai resident, uploaded the photos on his Facebook account and sent them to his sister on Tuesday, the birthday of their father.
“Along with the photos, he stated in the Facebook message that he got Goud killed and was sending the photos as proof and that it was a birthday gift for their father,” West zone DCP V. Satyanarayana said on Wednesday.
After making the techie unconscious using a cloth sprinkled with spirit and methanol while he was asleep in his house at Balkampet on December 4, Younus and his associates took him to a secluded place in Vikarabad. On reaching there, they realised that Goud was dead. They then dumped the body in bushes and left the place.
The techie used to live alone after divorcing Sandhya.
“His mother would not have known about his murder as she was living separately. If she had learnt that he disappeared, she would have lodged a complaint leading to registration of a man missing case,” the DCP observed.
Photos uploaded by Kumar on Facebook were first seen by Sandhya’s friends. One of them alerted the Cyberabad police that Goud’s murder photos were posted online. The Cyberabad police alerted their counterparts in S.R. Nagar on learning that Goud used to live in Balkampet.
“We didn’t know if the photos were real or morphed. First, inquiries with locals in the area confirmed that Goud was residing there,” Mr. Satyanarayana explained. Investigators later found that they were initially sent by Younus from Vikarabad and then uploaded by Kumar from Chennai.