Four days after the murder of an engineer-turned moneylender, whose body was found on the highway near Pedana, police on Monday caught the three accused in the case. Machilipatnam DSP K.V. Srinivasa Rao said that the trio belonged to Machilipatnam and had confessed to their involvement in the crime, while another accused, a 24-year-old housewife, is absconding.
According to the police, a couple – P. Anjali Kumari and her husband Peddi Raju – sought a loan of Rs.3 lakh from D. Somasekhar (40), the Singapore-based engineer, who came here last year to perform his daughter’s marriage, and submitted the property documents to him. In February, after Anjali Kumari handed over the documents, Somasekhar allegedly paid her only Rs.30,000 and also made sexual advances towards her, she alleged. Vexed with her repeated appeals for the rest of the money going in vain, Anjali took the help of her friend, A. Hemanth Kumar, to settle the matter. On May 23 evening, she invited Somasekhar to her house in Malkapatnam in Machilipatnam pretending that she had changed her mind. Accompanied by her friend, Hemanth Kumar, and his aides, A. Koteswara Rao and V. Anil Kumar, she waited in her house for Somasekhar. The group allegedly killed the moneylender by strangulating him with a towel and threw his body on the road near Pedana by packing it in a gunny bag.
The police acted on a missing complaint from the family of the deceased and caught the accused. “The plot was hatched allegedly without the knowledge of Anjali Kumari’s husband. She wanted to settle the matter with the help of Hemanth Kumar, with whom she had an extra-marital affair,” said the DSP.
