A district court here on Thursday sentenced two middle-aged men to rigorous imprisonment (RI) for life for killing their friend, gutting his body and dumping it in the Kadhinamkulam lake.
Fourth additional sessions judge J. Nazar found Abdul Waheed, 50, and Sudarshan, 48, guilty of the slaying their companion Muhammad Sali, in 1995 to hide their role in another crime.
The crime came to light when traditional fishers trawling the expansive Kadhinamkulam lake for freshwater fish accidentally netted a human limb. They later retrieved Sali's eviscerated body from the lake bottom in the middle of the deep trough known to local boatmen as ‘Kakkathuruthu.’
A post-mortem examination revealed that Sali had been bludgeoned to death and disemboweled. His internal organs were missing.
Sali's murder remained an unsolved cold case till Crime Branch officers P. Reghu and V. G. Chandramohan took over the investigation in 2002. They learned that Sali had been missing since May 19. One Jameen, later a key witness in the case, told them that he had last seen Sali with the accused. Another witness said he had seen the three take to the lake in a country boat.
The police investigation revealed that Sali and the suspects were friends with a common criminal history. The local police often booked the trio for spiriting away moored country boats to sell elsewhere The trio was under investigation for a recent boat theft, and Muhammad and Sudarshan learned that law was fast closing in on Sali.
They feared Sali would implicate them and decided to kill him. On May 19, a rainy day, the three slowly poled to Kakkathuruthu where the accused surprised Sali by hitting him on the head with a stone. They eviscerated his body, weighed it down with a rock to ensure that it remained sunk and threw it overboard.
Government pleader A. Hakim prosecuted the case.
