Daijiworld Media Network - Kundapur (SP)
Kundapur, Oct 29: Relating to an incident in which a drunkard was murdered by people close to him after which a futile attempt was made to project it as a case of suicide, it is now been presumed that the murder would have been committed to get a loan waived.
Nagaraj (36) from Moodubage Vivek Nagar was murdered on the night of October 18 when he was asleep. His wife, Mamata, her brother-in-law, Kumar, and named Dinakar and two minors were arrested, accusing them of murdering Nagaraj.
The accused
Now locals have come to believe that the murder was aimed at getting the benefit of loan waiver. Mamata had raised a loan of two lac rupees from a cooperative society for which Nagaraj was the guarantor. As he used to get drunk and fight with his family members and the neighbours alike, Mamata, along with brother-in-law, Kumar and Dinakar, had decided to murder him, it is said.
There are rumours that the murder-accused believed that if the man is murdered and it is projected as a natural death or suicide, the loan might be waived. Recently a person from the village had died of ill health and his loan had been waived. Mamata and others reportedly believed that the loan raised by Mamata would be waived if Nagaraj dies. They perhaps were not aware that the loan waiver applies only to the death of the borrower and not the guarantor.
It is said that a day before the murder, the gang had mixed sleeping pills in the food served to Nagaraj after which Mamata, Kumar and Dinakar together hatched the murder plan. The plan to murder Nagaraj was postponed by a day as Kumar was in a drunken stupor then and Dinakar did not muster enough courage to commit the murder alone. They are believed to have added sleeping pills to the food served to Nagaraj again the next day, and killed him by tightening a rope around his neck when he was asleep. After Nagaraj died, a case of unnatural death was registered in Shankaranarayana police station.
Sources say that some influential locals had brought pressure on the police to register the death as natural death.