Early on March 27, 2017, a traffic camera in Kollam town captured the registration plate number of a red Maruti Swift car which had broken the legal speed limit.
The photo later became instrumental in helping the police crack the murder case of radio jockey Rajesh, alias Rasikan Rajesh, who was hacked to death barely an hour earlier at his studio at Madavoor in Kilimanoor. The police have submitted the chargesheet in the case, indicting 12 persons, including two NRIs, for murder.
The ‘red Swift’
Initially, the Thiruvananthapuram Rural Shadow police, tasked with cracking the case, had limited material to work with.
Their sole lead was the statement of Rajesh’s friend, Kuttan, who was injured in the attack. He only knew the unknown assailants had arrived in a ‘red Swift.’
Officers spent days poring over hundreds of hours of traffic camera footage and zeroed in on the ‘red Swift.’
The assailants had swapped the fake number plate on the vehicle with the original one soon after the crime, a discrepancy which the police noted on the footage while monitoring the onward and return journey of the car.
The accused had used false identities to rent the car. However, a call made by an assailant to a friend on the phone he borrowed from the car owner proved pivotal in establishing the identity of the suspects.
The police case was that Abdul Sathar, a Qatar-based businessperson, had ordered Rajesh’s murder on the suspicion that the RJ, who worked briefly in the Gulf, had an extra-marital relationship with his wife, a dance teacher.
From Nepal
Sathar allegedly tasked Salih, alias Ali Bhai, his ‘man Friday’ and a professional bodybuilder, to eliminate Rajesh. Salih travelled from Qatar to Nepal and from there to New Delhi via a domestic flight to erase any record of his having entered the country.
He contracted a gang headed by one Appunni, an alleged hit-man, to help him kill the artiste. The accused communicated solely on WhatsApp platforms and relied on electronic money transfers.
