KOCHI: June 16, 2011. 7 pm. Peruvammuzhi near Muvattupuzha in Ernakulam was winding up the day when 65-year-old Mundiyattu Thankamma’s body was found drenched in a pool of blood at a house in the nondescript village. There were four knife gashes on her head and neck.
Thankamma’s son Reji Kuriakose, who was the first to spot the body, immediately alerted the police. Officers noted that her jewellery was missing. “So our first assumption was that it was a robbery gone wrong,” recalls Ramamangalam Sub-Inspector Sasidharan G, who was a constable at that time.
Thankamma had a daughter, who was married off, and two sons. Reji served as an altar boy at the local church and his elder brother ran a grocery store.
Reji was the primary suspect, recalls Sasidharan, who was part of a probe team led by Circle Inspector C I Pushkar and Sub-Inspector K L Yesudas. “Though an altar boy, he was a heavy drinker. Also, the neighbours had not seen anyone else, except him, enter or exit the house on that particular day,” he says.
Call records were examined, and friends and relatives were questioned. Then came a twist in the case. A woman constable raised doubts after noting “expensive lingerie” on the victim’s body. “It seemed unlikely that a financially weak 65-year-old woman would purchase such expensive clothing,” says Sasidharan.
Thankamma had worked as a kitchen helper at a hotel in Muvattupuzha for a few years. All hotel staffers who had worked with Thankamma were summoned for questioning. All, except one Satheesh Chandran, turned up.
Satheesh had left the job two weeks before the murder, citing a fracture in his arm. The only detail available was that he was from Thiruvananthapuram. No one knew anything else about him – no address, no contact number.
Just as the probe hit a dead-end, there came another detour. Call records of the victim threw up the name of a resident of Muvattupuzha, Kabeer Marady, who frequently called Thankamma. Kabeer told officers that he did not know the victim personally; he used to call her to connect with Satheesh, who did not have a phone.
Satheesh and Kabeer had worked together in a restaurant in Perumbavur in Ernakulam earlier. Officers questioned the restaurant owner and employees for details of Satheesh. No one was aware of him. Yet another dead-end.
Sasidharan recalls pressure mounting on the probe team. “There was talk of the case being transferred to the Crime Branch. We did not want that to happen,” says Sasidharan. “We kept grilling Reji, who appeared on the verge of confessing to the crime. He said he ‘may have’ committed the murder in a drunken stupor.”
The deadline to hand over the case to the Crime Branch was just a day away. “Kabeer came again to the station and wanted us to go to the restaurant where the duo had earlier worked together,” says Sasidharan.
There, the restaurant owner gave the address of a hotel where Satheesh used to stay. Officers scanned the hotel register, but could not find any details of the “mystery guy”. Just as they were about to leave the place, Kabeer yelled: “There he is!”
“Satheesh was majestically sitting on a sofa near the hotel reception,” says Sasidharan.
“I walked up to him and bluntly asked, ‘Why did you kill the old woman?’ He was stunned. I could see the panic in his eyes. His face turned sweaty. And in a shaky voice, he muttered, ‘I never meant to kill her’. I took a blind shot, and it worked.”
During interrogation, Satheesh confessed that he had an affair with Thankamma. She had allegedly borrowed money from him. When he asked her to repay as he needed money to treat his fracture, she refused. In a fit of rage, Satheesh attacked her with a knife and scooted with her jewellery.
“It was like a divine intervention, a twist of fate. Satheesh would have left the lodge had we been late by a minute. And he would have remained a mystery guy,” says Sasidharan. “Satheesh was senteced to life imprisonment in 2012.”
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