Chennai: It took the city police more than 45 days to crack the double murder of senior citizens at their home in Poonamalee. The police arrested three persons, S. Shankar, 31, S. Balu, 25, and S. Ganapathy, on Thursday after a long drawn out investigation process, which had them interrogate more than 200 people and stage an accident to catch the mastermind behind the crime. K. Babu, 62, a retired engineer from a private electrical company, and his wife, B. Shanthi, 55, a private Hindi tutor, were found dead at their Thirumal Nagar residence in Poonamalee on August 11.
Faced with a long list of mobile phone numbers recovered from the home of the deceased, the police made a slew of phone calls from their suspects list. When they zeroed in on Shankar, they knew that if they approached him as policemen, he would try and escape. When Shankar’s wife took the call and it was confirmed that he was around, the police told her that a person had met with an accident near Mogappair and Shankar’s number was recovered from his pocket. Shankar rushed to the spot and police picked him up.
He initially said that he had never been to Poonamallee, but later confessed that he had committed the crime to become rich. The police recovered the 15 sovereigns of stolen gold jewellery from him. The police had suspected prospective tenants visiting the house from the beginning. “Two days before they were found dead, the couple had taken off the ‘To let’ board from their gate, which added to our suspicion,” a police officer said.
Tracking Shankar down took time as he had left a bogus mobile number with Babu. “While most of the numbers corresponded to the names against them, Shankar’s did not, which aroused our suspicion,” a senior officer said, citing the psychology of first-time offenders who usually changed the last digit in their phone number. Numerous calls made subsequently led the police to Shankar.
Meanwhile, Ravi, a 40-year-old painter, who had worked for the couple, committed suicide on September 15 at his Thiruvallur home, blaming police harassment in a suicide note for his taking this extreme step.
