BENGALURU: The mystery surrounding the cold-blooded killing of a month-old infant boy on Friday in Neelasandra, in Ashok Nagar police limits, was cracked with his paternal grandmother confessing to police that it was she who had strangled the baby. Based on the confession, the grandmother, Vijayalakshmi, 54, was arrested.
Police claimed that Vijayalakshmi confessed during interrogation that she had committed the murder as the baby had been unwell for a few days and she couldn’t bear to see her son Karthik — who is reportedly unemployed — borrowing money for the baby’s treatment from her, his friends and relatives. She reportedly took a decision to kill the baby, one of the twins borne by Karthik’s wife Stella last month, to put a stop to the expenditure using borrowed money.
Vijayalakshmi told the police that on Friday, she gained entry into Karthik’s house on the pretext of taking care of the twins. When her daughter-in-law Stella went to the washroom, Vijayalakshmi took the sick baby and strangled him before hiding his body under the cot among some toys.
Although she has confessed, cops are also probing whether Vijayalakshmi killed the baby as an act of vengeance against Stella. Karthik and Stella had married against the wishes of their parents as it was an inter-religious marriage; besides, Karthik had drawn the ire of his family members by converting to his wife’s religion. His family had asked him to move out of the house where he and Stella had lived with Karthik’s father Chittar Raj, a retired army man, Vijayalakshmi and brother Aravind, who works with a defence PSU. Karthik and Stella had moved to the first floor of the building while the rest of the family lived on the ground floor.
Police said they had learnt that Vijayalakshmi nursed a grudge against Stella as she was the reason why her son had to move out. Vijayalakshmi’s arrest followed detailed interrogation of the family, including Karthik, Stella, Raj and Aravind. Karthik had, in his complaint on Sunday with Ashok Nagar police, accused his father and brother of killing his baby. But police had ruled it out. They had also probed the property dispute angle, and only after verifying all the facts of the case they had zeroed in on Vijayalakshmi.