NLC officer's body found after two months, friends' arrested for murder
Chennai: Never part with your ATM pin number to anyone, however close the person might be, is the warning sounded repeatedly by banks and the government in cautioning the public about ATM frauds.
A 55-year-old HR executive working in the public sector NLC paid with his life for ignoring this warning and giving his ATM card to his friend, along with the PIN number, for withdrawing money to buy their next bottle of booze, according to a source.
Police said Ashok Kumar, working as an HR executive, had gone missing on April 23. He was a bachelor and friends and colleagues assumed he might have gone to his native Kerala on a short holiday. But when they got no news about him for some time they called his twin brother Satheesan in Kerala and checked if he was with his family.
This made the family panic and Satheesan rushed to Neyveli for launching a search for his brother. He also lodged a police compliant.
The first clue came after the family found almost Rs 19 lakh had disappeared from his SBI account since the time he went missing by the use of his debit card. Police investigators zeroed in on a couple of ATMs in the Neyveli area and examined CCTV footages, following which Ashok's three friends were spotted making trips to the ATM machine and withdrawing money.
Intense interrogation cracked the suspects and they confessed to killing Ashok after feeding him with liquor and stealing his ATM card. It appeared that the victim had handed over his ATM card to one of them, along with PIN number, for withdrawing money quickly from to buy booze bottle so that the group could continue their binge sessions.
Ashok was too drunk to make the trip himself and in his physical state did not mind parting with the card along with the highly confidential PIN number. When his friend withdrew money from the machine, he was shocked to find the screen showing a balance close to Rs 20 lakh in Ashok's account number. He discussed with the other two friends about the booty in the bank and the trio hatched the plan to do away with Ashok for his money.
They took him for a drive and after a drinking session killed him and buried him in a fish pond in Pethanayakkanpalayam and went back to work as is nothing has happened and started drawing money every now and then and shared the money. They had done so without realising that the withdrawals and their own CCTV images would soon land them in the police net.
According to another version, the three friends had taken him to a secluded house in Indira Nagar and kept him with his mouth gagged with plaster and took his ATM card. On information provided by them, the body was fished out from the fish pond and spot post-mortem done. The accused persons were identified as Suresh Kumar of NJV Nagar in Neyveli, Rajesh and Kamaraj of Vadalur. They have been remanded to custody on being charged with kidnap and murder.
