Twenty one-year old West Bengal native Adam Ali, the prime suspect in the murder of a 68-year-old woman at Kesavadasapuram on Sunday, was produced in court and remanded in 10 days of police custody.
He is expected to be taken to the crime scene for evidence collection on Thursday.
He had reached the city hardly six weeks ago to work at a construction site adjacent to the victim's house near Mosque Lane. Addressing a press conference here on Wednesday after the suspect was brought to the city from Chennai, City Police Commissioner G. Sparjan Kumar said that he had previously worked at sites in Kollam and Palakkad.
According to the Commissioner, the suspect had approached the victim Manorama's house on Sunday afternoon, when her husband was away. He had attempted to slash the victim's throat and later strangled her in what is currently assumed to be a murder for gain. An estimated six sovereigns of gold that were on her was missing. The suspect had later dumped the dead body after tying a heavy rock to her legs. The CCTV visuals of the suspect just after he had dumped the body in the well emerged on Wednesday. The visuals had proved to be a vital clue for the police in identifying the suspect and in later matching the image with the ones obtained from CCTV cameras at the Central Railway Station, which led to him being nabbed from Chennai a day later.
Ali, the suspect, hails from Haldibari in Cooch Behar district of West Bengal. The Commissioner said that the City police has written to the Cooch Behar district police to ascertain whether he has any criminal antecedents or pending cases. According to him, the suspect along with five other migrant workers used to frequent Manorama's house to get drinking water during their work at the construction site. This familiarity had made his access to the house on the day of the crime easier.
The Medical College police received the missing person complaint from her husband on Sunday evening. The body was recovered at around 10.45 p.m. after an extended search launched with the help of the dog squad and the Fire Force. After the timing of the CCTV visuals confirmed that he might have got on a train to Chennai, Deputy Commissioner Ajith Kumar passed on the suspect’s photographs and other details to the Chennai Deputy Commissioner. The Chennai police team and the Railway Protection Force carried out extensive searches in all compartments, following which the suspect was nabbed.
“The rest of the details of the crime can be confirmed only after detailed questioning of the suspect. We also have to recover the gold that was taken from the victim,” said the Commissioner.
