Two days after a 49-year-old man was brutally murdered in his house at Othakadai on the city’s outskirts, special police teams arrested the victim’s sisters’ and three others on the charge of committing the heinous crime.
K. Arumugam, a bachelor, was hacked to death allegedly by his own family members who wanted to usurp his ancestral property estimated at Rs. 70 lakh.
Those arrested were the victim’s sisters Amutha (42) and Sinthathri (51), nephew Muthuselvan, Manikandan (21), and Mahendran (23).
Arumugam was murdered in his house at Harijan street in Othakadai near No. 1 Tollgate on the night of January 26 and the Samayapuram police have booked a murder case on a complaint from the victim’s nephew.
Four special teams were constituted to probe the murder case with investigators pursuing it with no immediate tangible clues in their hold, said Superintendent of Police S. Rajeswari.
Each team was entrusted with a specific task that included analysing the cell phone call data records, sifting video images generated from the closed circuit television system and looking into the property dispute angle, Ms. Rajeswari told presspersons at the Samayapuram police station on Wednesday.
The sniffer dog pressed into service to track the route taken by the culprits ran up to the No. 1 Tollgate, she said.
During the probe, one of the teams picked up a video grab generated from the CCTV installed at the Toll Plaza situated close to the crime scene.
Investigators found in the video image two persons on a motorcycle crossing the Toll Plaza in the early hours after the crime was committed.
Ms. Rajeswari said investigators suspected fratricide after one of the sisters of Arumugam did not turn up for cremation.
The teams monitored the activities of his sisters – Amutha (42) and Sinthathri (51), the Superintendent of Police said and added that based on detailed probe all the five accused were arrested. The accused confessed to the crime, she added.
Stating that the family members had conspired and executed the murder, she said the plan was to usurp the ancestral property held by Arumugam. The victim had several cents of land near Siruganur besides cash.
The sisters allegedly hired Manikandan and Mahendran to execute the murder and paid them Rs. 10,000 as initial amount out of the Rs. 1.5 lakh promised for the contract killing, Ms. Rajeswari said.
