BENGALURU: With help of her two teenage sons, a 48-year-old woman in Bengaluru kidnapped her husband and hatched a plot to kill him over a property issue. The HAL police on Wednesday rescued the victim Ramachandra and arrested Muniratnamma alias Lakshmamma, her two sons -- Abhishek (20) and Chetan (19) along with three of Muniratnamma’s relatives who were other accomplices in the crime.
The incident occurred on October 5, when Ramachandra, who owned a mini truck, was unloading some household articles of a family at its new accommodation. He received a call from an unknown number asking him for shifting articles to a new locality. Unsuspicious, Ramachandra went to the said place which was a lonely stretch in Ramesh Nagar in HAL Police station limits.
"After reaching Ramesh Nagar, he met two strangers. In the pretext of showing the house, which has articles to be shifted, asked him to walk with them,” explained an investigating officer.
"I was shocked to see my sons Chetan and Abhishek along with two others waiting with iron rods and wooden bat in their hands, Ramachandra said in his FIR report.
“As soon as I saw them, I asked why they were here? And immediately the next thing I remember is getting beaten up on my head with an iron rod and with a wooden bat on my lower back. I was crying in pain. One of them held a knife and threatened to slit my throat if I shouted. Six of them including my children tied my hands and legs, lifted me to my vehicle and took me to a house in Kittaganahlli in Bommasandra near Chandapura,” his statement further read.
Speaking to TNIE, Ramachandra’s brother Mahadev, who was worried that his brother didn’t return on Friday, said the family thought Ramachandra must have gone out of the city on some work and would return the next day.
“We called several times but the phone was switched off and only on Saturday midnight we received a call from a person from Kittaganahalli saying that my brother’s vehicle was abandoned near the village and he was being held captive by his sons in the house of my sister-in-law’s relative.”
Mahadev immediately lodged a complaint with the HAL police and told them that he suspects his sister-in-law and her children to be behind his brother’s missing as they had been involved in a property dispute.
“My brother had built some houses on a land gifted to my sister-in-law by her grandmother at her native place. The property was later given on a rent of 50,000 per month. Muniratnamma along with her sons later shifted to the same building and started collecting the rent without giving a single rupee to Ramachandra," said Mahadev.
My brother had taken a lot of hand loans to build the houses and therefore got the property registered in his name,” explained Mahadev.
Meanwhile, police said, Muniratnamma filed a cheating case in the court accusing Ramachandra of illegally getting the house registered in his name. This case was allegedly supposed to have come for hearing on October 22.
"The mother and her children thought if they kill Ramachandra the property would automatically go to Muniratnamma. With this intention, they hatched a plot and kidnapped him. They also forcibly made him drink Harpic liquid to poison him,” said the police.
When the police team went to the house where Ramachandra was kept, they found the victim injured and tied to a chair. The cops shifted him to Bowring hospital for treatment where he is recovering from severe injuries to the eye, lower back and head.
The police have taken Muniratnamma’s parents Veerabhadrappa and Puttamma along with sons Chetan and Abhishek, her uncle Veeresh and another relative Shivakumar to custody. Police is yet to arrest the accused who helped the sons in kidnapping Ramachandra from Ramesh Nagar.
Further investigation is on.