The recent murder of a 60-year-old woman for gain under Pendurthi police station limits baffled the police. They were clueless and desperately hunted in the dark for some clues. Typical to any investigation process, they tried the elimination route, by questioning neighbours and relatives for about two days. But they were not able to lay their hands on anything. The CLUES team was also not able to give concrete hint and sniffer dog squad also did not give any lead.
After a brain-racking 48 hours, they got the first clue when a neighbour said he did see a black colour bike parked near the house of the deceased between 12 noon and 1 p.m. on the day the incident had taken place. The coroner by then had already certified that the deceased Mahanti Ramalaxmi was smothered to death between 12 noon and 2 p.m. and the corroboration of the two facts got the police ticking. “But we again ended up in blind alley, as the neighbour who was able to tell about the make and model of the bike was not able to recollect the number. But he did drop a hint by saying that the word ‘Mahanti’ was inscribed on the number plate,” said ADCP (Crime) S. Varadaraju.
“Since both the surname of the deceased and the inscription on the bike were same, we once again suspected the hand of a relative and checking the bike details of all the relatives we tracked Jogunaidu, brother-in-law of the deceased and native of Nellimarla in Vizianagaram,” said former DCP (Crime) T. Ravi Kumar Murthy. During questioning Jogunaidu revealed that the bike was taken for a day by his friend Lenka Mohana Rao (26), sepoy in Army. It took about three more days to locate Mohana Rao who was residing at Akkayyapalem and on questioning he confessed to the crime.
In any investigation what is needed is a small clue as Emerson had once said ‘All is riddle, and the key to a riddle is another riddle.” And similarly, all crime investigations begin with a riddle and the key to solving it is another riddle, said Mr. Varadaraju.
In 2015, there was a similar case where a couple committed two murders for gain within a span of one week. In this case also the police had gone clueless for over 15 days till a smart constable picked up a clue that the killers posed as husband and wife and had a motorbike with the words ‘Bangaram’ inscribed on the number plates and this gave them away.
Sumit Bhattacharjee
