VELLORE:The serial number of a free table fan distributed under the government scheme turned out to be a vital clue for the Vellore police to crack a murder case. A murder was reported at the Arcot police station on May 9, and the deceased was identified as Ambika, aged about 70 years, of Vathiyar Street in Keelvishram. When her husband Elumalai returned home after work, he found her dead with her throat slit and lying in a pool of blood. The jewellery she had on was missing. During investigations, police found some jewellery and Rs 50,000 in cash, which was in the house, were found intact and the needle of suspicion pointed to relatives of the victim. Two days after the murder, a small boy told the police that he had seen one of tenants of the deceased’s house with blood on his hands. He had come out of the victim’s house around 8 pm on May 8. Four persons — a woman, two men and a girl child — had stayed in the house.
The police managed to get the name of one of the four persons — Kannan of Theni district. On inquiry with one of the relatives of the deceased, police learnt that Kannan had sold his table fan to a resident in the locality for Rs 600. “We located the person and got the fan from him. We got the serial number (3TF0314021805329), date of manufacture and manufacturer’s address from the fan,” said the inspector. Police contacted the manufacturer in Gujarat and found out the places to which they dispatched fans. “We inquired with the dealers in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry and finally found that it belonged to a batch of 300 fans that had been dispatched to Andipatti constituency in Theni district,” SP of Vellore, P Vijaya Kumar, told Express. The SP dispatched the special team to camp at Theni and locate the beneficiary who received the fan bearing that serial number.
“Through the revenue officialswe found that the batch of fans had been sent to a ration shop in Ethakovil village in Andipatti. On conducting a door-to-door verification. We found that the 251st beneficiary, Murugeswari, had received that fan,” said the inspector. Murugeswari told police that she gave the fan to her son V Sivachandrian alias Kutty Kannan, who was in Vellore. Police tracked him down and arrested him in Mettur on October 13. On interrogation, he confessed to the crime and said his friend Sekar, who stayed with him, had planned the murder. He executed it to rob the woman of her valuables. Police arrested him and were on the lookout for Sekar.