BENGALURU: Of the 151 police officers who have been conferred with this year’s Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) medals for excellence in investigation across the country, six officers are from Karnataka. Of them, Additional Superintendent of Police, Lakshmi Ganesh who was recently transferred to Lokayukta, is one of the recipients.
Two cases which he investigated got him the medal. One is the arrest of a sex maniac who had escaped after killing an old man, his widowed daughter and a 15-year-old granddaughter. The accused has been convicted and sentenced to death. Another case solved by Ganesh is the freezing of properties of a notorious drug peddler said to be a first by the state police. Properties worth over Rs 1.6 crore were frozen.
The triple murder of the aged man and his two family members at their farmhouse near Harohalli in January 2016 was a challenging case to crack. The accused had used gloves to kill the three, after the widow spurned his advances.
The accused Basavaraj Bhovi was arrested in Tamil Nadu. He was a butcher by profession and had used a machete to hack all the three to death. The three victims are Mare Gowda, Gowramma, 42, and Sukanya, 15.Ganesh, who was a DySP, found out that the accused’s meat shop was closed from the day the triple murder took place. With this lead, the police managed to arrest him.
The other case for which Ganesh was chosen for the medal was that of a 54-year-old habitual drug peddler Anjay Kumar Singh from Bihar, who was a convict in a drug-peddling case. While serving as Additional Superintendent of Police, Bengaluru Rural, Ganesh was instrumental in nabbing Singh from his native after the Suryanagar police had registered an NDPS case against him.
The police had seized his movable and immovable properties. Singh had settled at Byagadedanahalli in Anekal in 2016. The case was said to be a first where police confiscated properties of an inter-state drug peddler.
OTHER WINNERS
The other officers from Karnataka are Shankar K Marihal, SP, Hubballi; Venkatappa Nayaka, DySP, Raichur; M R Gowtham, DySP, Lokayukta; Shankaregowda Patil, DySP, CID, Kalaburagi and H Guru Basavaraj, inspector, Davanagere.