A 27-year-old woman traffic police constable has been arrested for allegedly chopping off the arm of a 31-year-old electrical contractor from Tumakuru in Bannerghatta on Tuesday evening.
She was with the victim, Veeresh, at the time of the attack. She was the complainant in the case.
But police claim she was the one who had given a contract to three people to carry out the attack.
They arrested Jayalakshmi, 27, attached to V.V. Puram traffic police, along with Kumar, 45, a labourer in City Market, his son Ananda, 19, and Vijay, 22.
The trio claimed to have taken a contract from Jayalakshmi with a specific instruction to chop off Veeresh’s hand. “Jayalakshmi had promised to pay ₹1.5 lakh to Kumar, a notorious rowdy in her jurisdiction. She paid an advance of ₹15,000 and had carried out a rehearsal a week before the incident,” said Deputy Superintendent of Police S.K. Umesh.
As part of the rehearsal, she took Veeresh to the Suvarnamukhi temple a week before the attack where Kumar, Vijay and Ananda strategised on how to commit the crime. On Tuesday, Jayalakshmi and Veeresh visited the temple again. While they were sitting on a rock, Jayalakshmi gave a missed call to one of the accused. The trio, on the pretext of robbing Veeresh, chopped off his hand.
The severed arm was recovered the next day around 300 metres away. The accused had also discarded the victim’s mobile phone and the machete.
During the investigations, Jayalakshmi was giving different versions about the crime, which made the police suspicious. They verified her mobile call records and zeroed in on Kumar.
Kumar told the police that Jayalakshmi was in love with Veeresh before her wedding to another man, which was arranged by her parents, who had objected to her relationship with Veeresh.
She continued to meet Veeresh even after her marriage, which led to her divorce. Jayalakshmi started asking Veeresh to marry her, but he did not seem keen.
“Jayalakshmi decided that Veeresh would marry her if she rendered him physically disabled so that no one else would marry him,” police said.
Umesh said that, on Saturday, police opened fire at Vijay when he attacked a constable, who was escorting him to the scene of the crime, in a bid to escape.
