Coimbatore District (Rural) Police on Wednesday arrested three persons, including a woman, for murdering a 39-year-old male beautician, dismembering the corpse into 12 parts and dumping them in different places in Coimbatore.
R. Kavitha (39), who ran a beauty parlour at Sarvanampatty, her male friends Amal Dhivakar (34) of Ganapathy and R. Karthik (28) of Sivanandhapuram were arrested for murdering R. Prabhu, a native of Surampatti in Erode district. He had been working in a beauty parlour on Cross Cut Road in Coimbatore and residing in a portion of Kavitha's house at Sivanandapuram.
The police launched an investigation after a severed left hand of a male was found in a garbage bin at VKL Nagar at Thudiyalur, near Coimbatore, on September 15.
Eight teams of the police supervised by Superintendent of Police V. Badrinarayanan checked visuals from 250 surveillance cameras at more than 50 places, visited over 150 factories, 15 hospitals and checked individual profiles of over 500 man missing cases from Coimbatore and other districts.
The police got the first lead when P. Sruthi (37) of Surampatti in Erode lodged a complaint with the Kattoor police on September 18, stating that her husband Prabhu, who worked in a beauty parlour on Cross Cut Road, was missing from September 14 night. The forensics team of the police cross-checked the fingerprints of Prabhu collected from his residence with that of the severed hand. The police confirmed the identity of the deceased as the fingerprints matched.
Further investigation and examination of call records of Prabhu revealed that he had an affair with Kavitha, who in turn was close to other men, including Dhivakar and Karthik, said the police.
According to the police, Prabhu had allegedly threatened Kavitha of leaking her private photos and videos if she did not compromise with him, following which she sought the help of Dhivakar and Karthik.
The accused invited Prabhu to Dhivakar’s house at Bannari Amman Street at Ganapthy Managar on the night of September 14 and murdered him. They dismembered the body into 12 parts and threw them at different locations that are not easily noticed by people. Dhivakar and Karthik dumped the hand covered in a plastic bag into a garbage bin at VKL Nagar, reportedly seeing a police patrol vehicle. The hand was spotted by conservancy workers the next morning.
Inspector General of Police (West Zone) R. Sudhakar and Deputy Inspector General of Police (Coimbatore range) M.S. Muthusamy lauded the investigation teams. Eight body parts, including the left hand, were traced by the police as of Wednesday.
