Bengaluru: The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) Bengaluru, which took up the case of murder of Bhaskar Shetty, a Manipal businessman on August 16, has filed a chargesheet against the five accused, including the victim’s wife, son, and three others at the Udupi court on Wednesday.
The chargesheet that ran to 1,300 pages named Bhaskar Shetty’s wife Rajeshwari Shetty, 50 as the prime accused, his son Navneet Shetty, 20, the second accused and Niranjan Bhat, 26, a priest in Nandalike village. Niranjan’s father Srinivas Bhat, 56, and the Shetty family’s driver Raghavendra, 26, were also chargesheeted for criminal conspiracy and destruction of evidence.
The chargesheet stated that on July 28, Bhaskar Shetty came back home from Durga hotel and took bath at his house. When he came out of the bathroom, the three accused, including Rajeshwari, Navneet and Raghavendra, sprayed pepper spray on him.
Later the accused bludgeoned the victim’s head using an iron rod and then made him drink pesticide to make him unconscious. Shetty was then bundled up in a boot-space of their car and taken to Nandalike village the same night to Niranjan’s ‘Yagna Shaala’. The body was doused with petrol and camphor and set on fire, the chargesheet stated.
Niranjan Bhat along with the driver then cleaned up the entire ‘Yagna Shaala’ and the accused then collected the charred bones and stones that were used for the ‘Yagna’ and dumped them into a river for destroying the evidence. Niranjan’s father Srinivas Bhat also replaced the tiles of the ‘Yagna Shaala’ where the body was burnt, the chargesheet mentioned.
Initially, based on a missing complaint lodged by victim’s mother Gulabi Shetty on July 29, who suspected Shetty’s wife was behind her son’s disappearance, the Manipal police took up investigations and detained Rajeshwari and her son and questioned the family after a murder case was registered. Since the case took several turns with the family misleading the police and with several missing links and loose ends, the government referred the case to the CID.
A special team from CID swung into action and interrogated the accused both collectively and separately and started gathering evidence in the form of bones and stones from the river, and sent them to Forensic Laboratory Science (FSL) for DNA analysis. Investigations revealed that all the accused had differences with Bhaskar Shetty on property sharing and illicit relationships and they had hatched a plan to eliminate him, the chargesheet stated.
