Bengaluru: In a tragic turn of events, all hope of finding the 19 year old son of an Income Tax official alive, after he was kidnapped on September 12 and asked his parents to arrange a ransom, sank on Thursday with his kidnappers arrested that evening confessed to killing him.
Sharath, a second year diploma student, and the son of I-T official, B.V. Niranjan Kumar, was trapped and killed by one of his closest friends, 21 year old former classmate Vishal. His distraught parents and sister and other members of the family were taken to the site where the boy's body, after he was strangled to death and had been first sunk in a lake, was later buried.
Sharath, had left his home in Muneshwara Nagar, Ullal Main Road on the evening of September 12, telling his parents he was going to show the new Royal Enfield Bullet he had been gifted by his parents that day for his birthday, to his friends who were waiting near Shirke Apartments in Kengeri.
That evening, when he didn’t return home, his worried parents received a WhatsApp video, where Sharath says he had been kidnapped by a gang, and only a ransom of Rs 50 lakh would set him free, and that the kidnappers were closely tracking his sister. He ended by asking the kidnappers "is that ok, is this what you wanted me to say." “Appa, give them the money and they'll release me,” were Sharath's last words to his heartbroken parents.
Vishal, accused
Killer friend
Knowing Sharath’s fad for new, expensive and foreign bikes, Vishal had told him about his friend having a Benelli bike and he would be driving it on the evening of September 12. Apparently lured by this, Sharath expressed his desire to join them and went in his recently bought bike to Kengeri satellite town to meet Vishal and his friends. The teenager was studying automobile engineering at Acharya Institute of Engineering. As planned, Vishal and others kidnapped Sarath in a car as he reached the meeting point, police said. Later, fearing that Sharath's parents might approach police and they would be caught, on September 12 between 11.30 pm and midnight, Vishal and others killed Sharath by strangulating him and threw his body into Narasimhayyana lake before burying it some days later.
Panicky killers checked on body again & again
Police revealed that once the kidnappers came to know that Sharath's parents had filed a police complaint, they strangled him with a cable and threw his body into the Narasimhaiana Kere near Ramohalli, after weighing it down with stones.
Sharath Kumar’s parents and relatives at Manchanabele Dam, where the youngster’s body was exhumed on Friday
“They returned to the lake to see if the body had stayed down. When it floated to the surface, they weighed it down with more stones and threw it back into the lake. On Wednesday, they found the body floating again and so took it out and buried it near a quarry in Kurbarapalya at Ajjenahalli near Ramohalli. The body was exhumed and a postmortem was conducted on Friday," the police said.
Investigation revealed that all five accused were in need of money and planned the kidnapping of Sharath, whom Vishal said came from a wealthy family.
