Ending the mystery over the murder of two youths engaged as gold carriers to the State from the Gulf, police teams from Karnataka and Kerala dug up their bodies from Maruthadukkam, near Kundamkuzhi, in the district on Monday.
Three persons hailing from here, including the son of a leading criminal lawyer, had been arrested in Mangalore in connection with the case.
The bodies of Fahim, 25, a resident of Kuttichira in Kozhikode, and Nazeer, 24, hailing from Thalassery, were found buried in a rainwater pit, Superintendent of Police Thomson Jose told The Hindu . Mangalore city Crime Branch sleuths, Mr. Jose, and Adur circle inspector A. Satheesh Kumar, along with the three arrested, were present.
The bodies were buried in 10 cents of land recently purchased by one of the arrested.
Mr. Jose said the post-mortem examination was conducted on the spot and the bodies handed over to relatives.
The duo were hacked to death at a rented house in the Pandeshwaram police station limits in Mangalore on July 1 by the arrested trio in a bid to pocket the entire Rs.75 lakh received from the sale of gold.
After managing to take the gold out of the Mangalore airport, one of the carriers tried to establish contact with an acquaintance here to facilitate the sale of the gold to local jewellery outlets instead of handing it over to the assigned persons in Kozhikode.
Reaching an understanding with Munafath Munafar Sanaf, 25, hailing from Cherkala, near here, and Mohammed Irshad, 24, and Mohammed Riswan, 23, both of Anangoor locality here, to sell the gold, Fahim and Nazeer stayed with the trio in a rented house in Mangalore to execute their plans.
The arrest of the trio by the police in Mangalore followed a tip-off that two of the five were missing, Mr. Satheesh Kumar said.
The arrested persons confessed to the police that they killed the duo inside the rented house on July 1 and buried the bodies at Kundamkuzhi, Mr. Satheesh Kumar said.
Meanwhile, the police have managed to recover part of the gold from select jewellery outlets in the town, sources here said.
