Daijiworld Media Network - Bengaluru (SP)

Bengaluru, Jun 8: The police of the city had stumbled upon mutilated bodies on railway tracks on several occasions during the last some years. As there was nothing to arouse their suspicion, they treated several among them as unnatural deaths. But they have realized now that it was a blunder on their part, and three such bodies were of people murdered by a gang and dumped on railway tracks.

With the arrest of seven persons, identified as Kumar, Ganesh, Nagendra Kumar, Raju, Nagendra, Venkatesh and Shekhar, on Tuesday June 6, police have, to their surprise, realized that they should have investigated such cases more diligently. Out of them, two, Shekhar and Kumar, had been named as accused in a murder which happened in the past. Both had secured bail in the case.

The gang, it transpires, had committed three murders, all of which were treated as unnatural deaths. The police who arrested the above seven persons when investigating the murder of a person named Suresh during 2014, stumbled upon information that they were taken for a ride by the gang which escaped without getting caught or punished for these murders.

During their interrogation, the gang admitted to killing a person named Yallappa in 2001 as one of the gang members, Venkatesh, had illicit relationship with the victim's wife. Yallappa's body was recovered on railway tracks, and the police had promptly closed the file, after concluding that it was suicide. Similar tactics were used in murdering Ramesh in 2002. The gang had a score to settle against Ramesh because he had an ongoing relationship with Venkatesh's wife.

The police who investigated the case of finding Ramesh's body on railway tracks again treated this as a case of suicide. The gang then found that Suresh, brother of Ramesh, was trying to avenge his brother's murder. This obstacle was removed by the gang by strangulating Suresh. Suresh's body was also thrown on railway tracks near Kengeri in the city after he was eliminated in 2014.

After a missing case about her husband was filed by Suresh's wife, identified as Munirathna, the police began to investigating it. She identified Suresh's body that was found on the railway tracks. The police, who followed the trails of contacts Suresh had and people with whom he had enmity, in course of time, found about the involvement of a gang in his death.

The police lament now about having handled the above cases without giving them much attention. City police commissioner, Praveen Sood, said that the police will henceforth investigate all the cases of unnatural deaths in detail so that the murderers do not go Scot free as in above cases.