Puttur : Man Held for Taking Away Lives of Children, Two Others
Pics: Lokesh Gowda Puttur
Daijiworld Media Network – Puttur (SP)
Puttur, Jun 17: The bodies of two children, a ten-year-old boy, and his three-year-old sister, were found from a tank in Ardamoole near Panaje, within the limits of the rural police station here. Sources said that the murder-accused, who was staying in a lodge here, was taken into custody by the policemen on Wednesday June 16 night. Reportedly, he too wanted to commit suicide later. During questioning, the policemen extracted information from him that he had fled from Tumukur on Monday, after savagely murdering his mother-in-law and sister-in-law.
The accused has been identified as Ramesh Naik (40), a resident of Ardamoole near Panaje. Naik reportedly is working as manager of Punjab National Bank’s Solapur branch in Maharashtra, while his wife, Sundari, works as a clerk in State Bank of Mysore. His family was put up in Kumutaiah Lay Out in the second phase of Banashakari in Tumkur.
After Sundari was recently transferred to Mangalore, she had come here along with children, Bhuvanaraj (10), and Krittika (3). She also started working in the local branch of the bank.
Reportedly, Naik came to Mangalore on Wednesday, and took both his children to Puttur, when his wife was away at work. At around 7.30 pm on Wednesday, he led his children to Ardamoole and pushed them into the tank. The bodies of the children were found on Wednesday evening and shifted to a hospital. Even though it was initially thought that it was an incident of accidental drowning, after Naik’s maternal uncle filed a complaint with the rural police station here on Wednesday night itself, accusing Naik of committing the murders, the policemen came to know of the truth. It is said that Ramesh Naik had hired a room in a lodge here with the specific objective of committing suicide, but the policemen, in a swift action, took him into custody before he could execute his plan.
It is said that on Monday June 14, Naik, who has a rented house in Tumkur, fought with his mother-in-law, Saraswati (60) and her 35-year-old daughter, Savita, and murdered both of them by tightening ropes around their necks. Their bodies were dumped into a water tank of the house. Sundari came to know of this macabre incident, only after Ramesh gave out this information to the policemen here on Wednesday night.
Ramesh Naik is said to have looked after his sister-in-law since the last many years, and was planning to perform her marriage shortly. But Savita, who was employed in Bangalore, was involved in love affair with another man, which Ramesh did not like. Ramesh was enraged at this development, and murdered Savita and her mother, after a heated exchange of words, it is said. It is also presumed that Ramesh, who also wanted to kill his wife, did not succeed, as she had gone to the bank.
After the policemen here conveyed this information to their counterparts in Tumkur, the personnel of Tilak Park station in Tumkur rushed to Naik’s rented house there and found the bodies of mother-daughter duo in the water tank on Thursday morning.
A case has been registered by the rural police station here. Further investigations are on.