A day after a priest was found murdered in a seminary here, the police are yet to find strong leads in the case. They, however, suspect it to be an inside job.
Father K J Thomas (62) was strangulated inside St Peter’s Pontifical Seminary at Malleswaram in the wee hours on Monday.
A police source said the rector was murdered by people known to him, adding that the assailants had engaged the victim in a conversation before attacking him.
A senior police officer said that three people were ‘directly’ involved in the crime and evidence pointed out that they were not professional killers. “It is suspected that a person known to Fr Thomas knocked on his door when he was asleep. As he came out, the person diverted his attention by talking to him, while giving the other two killers enough time to attack him from behind.”
“He was hit on his head with a blunt weapon, which inflicted a severe internal injury. He was also hit on his forehead. They strangled him to death using his dhoti,” the officer said.
“The killers wiped the blood off the floor using Fr Thomas’ gown. They also searched his room for some documents. If it was a murder for gain, the assailants would have stolen the valuables from the seminary too and would not have wasted time cleaning the blood in the corridor. It seems this was the first time the accused were committing such a crime,” the officer said.
The postmortem was conducted at the M S Ramaiah Hospital mortuary on Monday.