Four men who allegedly murdered a 55-year-old bank branch manager and made it look like he had killed himself were arrested on Tuesday after the police realised it was not a case of suicide but a well-executed crime.
The four accused, one of whom is a 36-year-old real estate agent named Tilak Kempegowda, are suspected to have killed the manager to avoid repaying a private loan of over ₹1 crore taken from him, the police said.
Tilak owned a chicken farm near Hindalgere and a guest house in Byatarayanadoddi, where the other accused — Pradeep, 24, Mahesh, 24, and Abhilash Gowda, 25 — were working.
On August 16, the police found an abandoned car near Malagala underpass with the body of the manager, Muniyappa, in the back seat. A bottle of poison found near the body led the police to initially believe it was a case of unnatural death. However, Muniyappa’s wife Mamtha refused to believe that her husband had killed himself. It was only after she approached the police that they went through the autopsy report thoroughly. The report had no mention of poison in his system and said he had died because of asphyxiation.
Investigations revealed that Muniyappa was also a private moneylender and often facilitated loans between two parties as mediator. “He would borrow money from a person at a lower interest rate and issue the same amount as loan for a higher interest, thereby making money in the arbitrage,” said M.N. Anucheth, Deputy Commissioner of Police, West.
Muniyappa met Tilak in 2014 when the latter came to the Mariyappanapalya branch of the cooperation bank to open an account. A few months later, Tilak borrowed ₹1.05 crore from Muniyappa, who in turn had got the money from small-time moneylenders. But soon, Tilak started reneging on his payments and Muniyappa had to pay ₹22 lakh interest a month to his creditors.
The two men quarrelled over the loan repayment for a fortnight before the murder. Muniyappa is said to have told Tilak that he would commit suicide if he could not repay the loan. “This gave him the idea to murder [Muniyappa] and make it look like a suicide,” a police officer said.
Tilak and one of his associates, Pradeep, purchased a bottle of pesticide. On August 15, Tilak asked Muniyappa to come Mariyappanapalya under the pretext of conducting a financial transaction. Pradeep took him to Tilak’s guest house in Byatarayanadoddi, where Mahesh and Abhilash forced Muniyappa to drink the pesticide. When he resisted, Pradeep strangled Muniyappa with a rope. They then dumped him in his car, drove it to Malagala and abandoned it.
Clue in the colour
According to the DCP, during the course of the investigation, footage from more than 100 CCTV cameras was analysed. In one footage, the police identified Muniyappa’s car and saw that he was accompanied by a man wearing a multicoloured shirt.
“This was our first clue. We started combing through the footage again looking for a man wearing a similar shirt during the same time frame,” he said.
This led them to Mahesh, and subsequently the remaining accused.
