MALAPPURAM: The Valanchery police on Wednesday revealed that Subeera Farhat, 21, who went missing from Chottur on March 10, was murdered by a neighbour. The police have arrested Mohammad Anwar, 38, of Varikkodan house in Chottur, in that regard. The body of Farhat, daughter of Kizhakkeparambath Kabir, was found buried in a plot near a laterite quarry in the area late on Tuesday. The body that lay beneath the soil piled up there was exhumed on Wednesday.
Anwar told the police that he suffocated Farhat to death and later buried her. He closed her mouth with his hand for some time and she fell unconscious, the police said recounting his statement. The mask wore by the girl helped him suffocate her easily, said a source. While Anwar said he murdered Farhat for her jewellery, the police are probing a rape angle too.
While the plot is owned by one of Anwar’s relatives, he has been supervising various activities there for the past several years. A police team headed by Tirur DySP K A Suresh Babu has been investigating the case for the past 40 days, after receiving a missing complaint from Farhat’s parents.
The girl was working as a helper at a dental clinic in Vettichira. But after checking the CCTV footage from the area, the police found that she did not reach the bus stop after stepping out of her house on March 10. The police came to a conclusion that the girl might have gone missing on her way to the bus stop from her house between 9am and 9.30am on the day. But there was no clue about what happened to her until the investigation reached Anwar.
“Anwar was in the area during the time the girl went missing. He went out of his house to buy meat, but he returned after a delay of one-and-a-half hours, as per our assumption,” Suresh Babu said.
Anwar’s desperate moves to escape from police cost him
The DySP said Anwar was in their list of suspected people. “We focused more on him when we found out that he is involved in criminal cases and that he had financial issues. On questioning, we found some mismatch between his statements and our assumptions. But when we told him that we had decided to remove the piled up soil, he confessed that he killed her,” Suresh Babu said.
The officer said Anwar’s desperate move to escape from the police helped them turn the tables on him. “He called a JCB driver over the phone to pile up more earth in the area where he had buried Farhat. The JCB driver later alerted the police about the call suspecting something unusual about Anwar’s move. Anwar thought that heavy rain would wash away the soil he had put over the body,” he added.
The police will conduct a DNA test to confirm whether the body, which was found in a decomposed state, is that of Farhat. On Wednesday, the police collected evidence related to the murder. While Anwar will be presented before court, he is expected to be taken back into custody to complete the evidence collection.
HE JOINED SEARCH FOR MISSING GIRL
Anwar’s actions after the murder ignited memories of the character ‘Tailor Mani’ played by Jagadish in Sethurama Iyer CBI. In the movie, after killing Manikkunj, Mani cooperated with various agencies investigating the murder to save himself from a prison term. In the Valanchery incident, Anwar worked actively when local residents searched for the girl in the area. The police revelation of murder shocked residents in the area and many of them couldn’t even believe that Anwar killed the girl.