KASARGOD: It took six years for the police to piece together the entire puzzle in the missing of Muhammed Kunhi, 32, a resident of Star Nagar in Mogral Puthur panchayat. The last piece of the jigsaw was his wife Sakeena, 35. Kunhi is no longer alive. He was done to death by Sakeena and the body dumped in Chandragiri river in her backyard, said Jaison K Abraham, DySP of District Crime Records Bureau, who cracked the case. Even as the pieces fell in place, Sakeena was not to be found. For one month, Abraham’s team searched for her across the state and Karnataka.
“She was living right under our nose,” he said. The police traced her to a rented house, 400 m from the office of the district police chief at Vidyanagar. “We took time to find her because she kept moving house every two months, and used new names always,” he said. She was arrested along with her former paramour, N A Ummer, 41, of Bovikanam, and Sakeena’s 16-year-old son, who the police said helped his mother dispose of the body. That was last Saturday. Unidentified body In a week, the police dug out the shawl she allegedly used to strangle Kunhi and the plastic sack used to wrap the body from the banks of Chandragiri. Police also suspect an unidentified body recovered from the river at Uchilampady near Thekkil on April 7, 2012, could be Kunhi.
“The body was in a decomposed state. We have reopened the file,” Abraham said. The body was cremated without identifying it. Police suspect Kunhi was killed between March 8 and March 25, 2012. “He was reported missing by his brother-in-law only on August 8, 2012. So we did not make the connect with the unidentified body then,” said an officer. How the case was solved The case was lying dormant for long until Abraham took over as DCRB head. He ‘meticulously’ went through the statement of every witness in the case and found Sakeena made several contradictory statements at various times. “What I found odd was she never filed a complaint of her husband going missing,” said the DySP.
The complaint was filed much later in August 6, 2012, by Kunhi’s brother-in-law Mohammed Shafi. Initially, Sakeena said her husband deserted her. Soon after, she moved out with her two sons, then aged 2 and 10. “She told a neighbour her husband had died and he was buried in a mosque,” said the officer. Earlier investigation could not verify these statements. “We went to the mosque. There were no records of Mohammed Kunhi being buried there,” said the officer.
‘She spilled the beans during sustained questioning,” he said. ‘Killer too is a victim’ The police said Mohammed Kunhi, who was under treatment for schizophrenia, was wealthy: He had three plots in his name and co-owned several other family property worth around Rs 2 crore. His family hid his illness from Sakeena before marriage. Ten years into marriage, she came in contact with Ummer, a real estate broker with a criminal past. “He had served time for theft and was also an accused in a sex trade case,” said an officer. He was also married thrice. The DySP said Ummer had an eye on the property. He plotted the murder and made Sakeena execute it.
“At that point, she was so much enamoured by Ummer she did whatever he said,” he said. Ummer promised Sakeena he would join her in disposing of the body once Kunhi is killed, he said. “Sakeena strangled a heavily sedated Kunhi with her shawl. Instead of turning up, Ummer asked her to dispose of the body on her own,” said the officer. Kunhi was killed one afternoon. Sakeena kept the body till next afternoon. She sought the help of her elder son, then 10 years old. “She told him Ummer killed his father,” he said. The mother and son wrapped the body and dumped it in Chandragiri in their backyard. The boy, now 16 years old, is now in the government’s observation home. After the murder, Ummer stayed away from Sakeena till all suspicion on him died.
To be sure, Ummer was rigorously questioned when the missing complaint was filed. He did not budge, said an officer. Later, Ummer helped Sakeena sell the three plots in Kunhi’s name for `27 lakh. He cheated the entire amount from her by promising to buy her a house. “When he realised he would not be able to sell the other plots because they were jointly held by his father and brothers, Sakeena became a liability to him and he decided to dump her,” said the DySP. Before that, he pushed her into prostitution. “She was under his vicious grip,” he said.
When the police found Sakeena, she was living by begging in mosques. “She used to go from mosque to mosque telling the committee members her younger son had blood cancer and sought money,” he said. “She lived from whatever she got as alms,” he said. “She is a victim of the circumstances.” The case was challenging, the DySP said. Collecting evidence against Ummer was the toughest part. “We now have clinching circumstantial evidence against him,” he said. Sakeena and Ummer would be produced before the court on Saturday.