Three days after finding the body of a 55-year-old woman on the Government Medical College Hospital (MCH) campus here, the police on Tuesday arrested a person in connection with the murder.
The accused has been identified as Sathyan, 45, of Kozhancherry. A retail lottery vendor, he used to live with the victim, Ponnamma till recently. A police team had earlier taken him into custody and interrogated him based on a statement by the victim’s daughter.
The accused, who confessed to the crime, was taken to the crime scene for evidence collection on Tuesday. The accused will be produced before a magistrate later.
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Cash, gold stolen
Preliminary investigations suggested that the accused had killed the woman by smashing her head with an iron rod. Following the murder, the accused allegedly stole a bag containing cash and gold from the victim’s possession.
The woman used to sell lottery tickets in the Medical College area. The woman had attacked him on two occasions. To avenge these attacks, Sathyan lured Ponnamma to an isolated location near the cancer ward and killed her using an iron rod.
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The body was later shifted to a waste pit and covered with card board. The partially decomposed body was found at the waste dump behind the medical college’s cancer ward.
CCTV network
Meanwhile, the Gandhinagr police have approached the hospital authority seeking to set up a CCTV camera network to improve round-the-clock surveillance on the 200-acre campus. As part of it, cameras should be established in all hospital wards and the hospital premises. Further, steps should be initiated to keep the hospital campus free of lottery vendors and other outsiders during night, besides collecting details of people who roam around the campus in a suspicious manner. Steps are also in place to strengthen police patrolling in the region during night.