A woman, who hired three contract killers to murder a man to avenge the killing of her brother, was arrested by police along with her accomplices in the city on Wednesday.
Police said Sonu Bai's brother was murdered in Nanded five years ago and Tuljaram of Hyderabad, one of the accused in the case, was subsequently acquitted. She believed that Tuljaram was instrumental in the murder of her brother and got him killed three months ago. Police had so far believed that Tuljaram went missing.
The three other accomplices arrested were Kishan Das, Shivraj Patel and T. Praveen Kumar Reddy. Narrating the sequence of events, East Zone DCP Mahesh Chandra Ladda said Kishan Das was the brother of the murder victim, Tuljaram. Das had some enmity with his brother. Sonu Bai, a resident of Koti, contacted Das and offered Rs. 4 lakh to do away with his brother and paid half of the amount as advance. Das, in turn, contacted Shivraj Patel and T. Praveen Kumar Reddy to carry out the murder and offered to pay them Rs. 1 lakh each. As per the plan, Sonu Bai lured Tuljaram to her house on February 24 claiming she wanted to talk to him personally. She escorted him to a room where the trio was waiting. They allegedly stabbed him to death, hid the body in a gunny bag, shifted it to a secluded place in Shadnagar and burnt it.
Meanwhile, Tuljaram's family approached Chaderghat police, who registered a case of missing person. Tuljaram's disappearance would have remained a mystery, but Patel and Reddy spilled the beans when the Chaderghat police caught them during routine vehicle checking. Based on their confession, Sonu Bai and Das were nabbed.