Retired Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research scientist found murdered

CHENNAI: A 61-year-old retired scientist of the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research at Kalpakkam was found murdered in his house at Sadras in Kancheepuram district on Monday. He was alone at home. Preliminary inquiries revealed that no valuables were missing from the house.
Babu Rao had been working as a guest lecturer at Hindustan University for the past one and a half years since he retired.
Police said two steel fabrication workers Basheer, 23, and Satish Kumar, 24, hailing from Pudupattinam near Kalpakkam, who came to the house of Babu Rao at 9.30 am to attend to some repair work did not get a response when they knocked on the front door.They went round to the rear of the house and found the back door ajar. When they peeped into the kitchen they found Babu Rao lying dead.
They informed police and a team from the Sadras police station rushed to the place and sent the body to the Government Hospital in Chengalpet for autopsy. A police officer said, "Babu Rao was attacked with a wooden stool. He suffered bleeding injuries on his right ear and forehead. The assailants left the stool on his neck."
Police said there was no forced entry into the house as the back door was open. The almirah in the ground floor bedroom floor was intact, police said quoting Babu Rao's wife Raja Lakshmi, who rushed home from Sulurpet in Andhra Pradesh on hearing about the murder. She had left on Saturday to attend a relative's function. Police said they used to leave the keys in the cupboard and almirah and no valuable in the safe was missing. Even 45,000 kept in a bag was not touched.
A senior police officer said, "The murder may have happened on Sunday night. His daughter Josthna, 31, who works as a software engineer in a private company at Karapakkam and stayed at Velachery, visited her parents' house on Sunday morning along with her husband Mallaiah and left at 8.30pm." His son Viswa Chaitanya, 24, pursuing higher studies in Sweden, is on his way to Chennai.
Babu Rao and his wife lived in a three-storey house at Bharat Nagar, which is a newly developed area. They moved in a decade ago, police said.
The Sadras police have registered a case and launched a hunt for the assailants.