Ten days after the kidnapping of Sharath N., 19, the Jnana Bharathi police recovered his highly decomposed body from a quarry at Ajjenahalli, Ramanagaram, on Friday morning.
The prime accused, Vishal H.P., 21, a private college student and part-time agent at Ullala RTO, was a childhood friend of Sharath.
Based on his confession, the police arrested Vinay Prasad, 24, a cab driver Karan Pai, 22, and Vinod Kumar, 24, both employed in private firms. Another accused, Shanth Kumar, a cab driver, is on the run.
Sharath, a diploma student and son of Niranjan Kumar, an Income Tax officer, went missing on September 12. The family received a WhatsApp video in which Sharath informed his father that he had been kidnapped for a ransom of ₹50 lakh. He also appealed to his father not to approach the police as his life was in danger.
After Vishal realised that the family had approached the police, the gang allegedly strangled Sharath and dumped the body into a lake. Later, when the body surfaced, the accused removed it from the lake and dumped it in a quarry, the police said.
Accused was in touch with Sharath’s family
Investigations have revealed that Vishal used his proximity to Sharath’s family to keep himself updated on the progress of the investigations.
After the first video was sent from Sharath’s mobile phone to his family through WhatsApp on September 12 — the day of the kidnapping — Vishal, who was known to the family, called Sharath’s sister on the pretext of enquiring about the incident.
Claiming that he had learnt about the incident through media reports, he asked Sharath’s sister about the family’s course of action.
When she revealed that they would file a complaint with the police, Vishal made another video of Sharath appealing to his parents not to file a police complaint, according to the police.
Vishal said during the confession that when he and his accomplices learnt of the police’s involvement, they kept Sharath in a car and moved around the city, the police said.
“They initially thought of letting him go when they realised that the family would not pay them any money. But fearing that Sharath would reveal their identity, they decided to kill him,” said a police officer.
Vishal then instructed his accomplices to strangle Sharath.
They then carried his body in the car, tied a boulder to it and dumped it in Narasimhaiah lake at Ramohalli, said Additional Commissioner of Police (West) Malini Krishnamoorthy. Soon after, Vishal visited Sharath’s house to console the family.
For the next couple of days, members of the gang kept a watch on the lake to ensure that the body didn’t float.
A few days later, when they saw that the body had floated to the surface, they tied more boulders and stone slabs to it and dumped it into the lake again.
However, the body resurfaced four days later. They then took out the decomposed body and went around the city for a day in a car, and then buried it near a quarry at Ajjenahalli in Ramanagaram district, the police said.
The police have recovered Sharath’s motorcycle from the house of one of the kidnappers and two cars used for kidnapping and shifting the body.
They tracked the mobile transmission tower locations from where the WhatsApp messages were generated, eventually stumbling upon the mobile number that led them to Vishal.
Vishal reportedly confessed that one of his associates, Shanth Kumar, a cab driver, had incurred a loan of ₹4 lakh and had asked Vishal’s help to repay it. Vishal, who knew that Sharath came from a well-to-do family, hatched a plan to kidnap him to make money.
His idea was to ensure that the family did not file a police complaint, get the ransom amount, and distribute it among themselves. Vishal lured Sharath, who had a craze for bikes, into the trap on the pretext of going on a ride on a high-end bike. His plan, however, went awry after the family approached the police.
“There was minimal time between the kidnap and the murder, and it is unfortunate that the police could not do anything about it,” said T. Suneel Kumar, Police Commissioner.
