IDUKKI: They were two murders that were initially unknown and unconnected.
The first victim was a four-day-old infant in 2016. The second was a 60-year-old man who met his end in August 2023. A unrelated police probe into a theft case that discovered two women locked up in a room for months and led to a sorcerer soon unearthed the connection and a double-murder committed seven years apart came to light.
Kakkattukada, a small sleepy village in the high ranges of Kattappana, in Kerala's Idukki district, is yet to recover from the shocking details of the murders that were cracked by the police team probing the theft case early this month.
The unravelling began when a Kerala police team questioned two men caught for a theft at a workshop in Kattappana on March 2.
Vishnu Vijayan (27) of Kakkattukada was caught early morning by the workshop owner’s son and his neighbour who accidentally passed by the site on the day of the incident. Nitheesh (31), who was Vishnu's accomplice in the theft, ran away from the spot but was later caught by the police.
The chilling details of the murders slowly began to emerge when police reached Vishnu's rented house at Kakkattukada to probe his family background. They had done this after shifting him to the Kottayam Medical College Hospital for the treatment of a leg injury suffered during the theft. The police were shocked to find Vishnu’s mother Suma Vijayan and sister Vidhya Vijayan locked up in a room in the house.
During questioning, Vishnu's sister Vidhya revealed to the cops the grim details of the double murder executed by Nitheesh, who it turned out was her live-in partner.
She said Nitheesh killed his four-day-old infant as the kid was born when they were not officially married. The murder had taken place at a house at Sagara Junction in Kattappana, which the family had owned and stayed in then.
The second murder victim was NG Vijayan, the father of the Vidhya-Vishnu siblings, at their rented house in Kakkattukada.
As per his confession, Nitheesh killed Vijayan by smashing the 60-year-old man's head with a hammer after a verbal duel in August last year.
“Nitheesh was a sorcerer and he had brought the entire family under his influence through his witchcraft. Even the house owned by the family in Sagara Junction was sold as per his direction and the family have been staying at various rented houses in the Kattappana area for the last several years,” an official with the intelligence wing told The New Indian Express.
Police said Nitheesh also managed to keep the family secluded from the outside world. So, none of their relatives or neighbours had any information about the family or about the two women inside the house. Moreover, years of living in seclusion as witnesses to the murders had made Vidhya and Suma mentally unstable, they said.
Ward member Rema Manoharan told the media she had no inkling that the two women were residing in the house. The house owner too echoed her, saying she wasn't aware of Vidhya and Suma being in the house. The owner said Vishnu had taken the house for rent under a different identity and used to come to her home to pay rent.
Illicit affair and newborn
The investigation team was wondering at first if they could rely on Vidhya's statements that Nitheesh had murdered her newborn child and her father Vijayan since she was mentally unstable. But then came Nitheesh’s confession.
Nitheesh told the cops that he had strangled the child to death to avoid dishonour and buried the body at the house in Sagara Junction in 2016. As per Nitheesh’s statement, Vidhya’s father Vijayan was also involved in the crime and it was he who had aided Nitheesh in murdering the child. Since the family feared social stigma, they kept the murder a secret and supported Nitheesh in his other illegal activities.
Vijayan’s murder
When he killed Vijayan in 2023, Suma and Vishnu helped him in burying the body inside the room of their rented house in Kakkattukada as they feared Nitheesh would spill the beans on earlier crimes if they didn’t do so.
It also emerged that Nitheesh had kept Vidhya and Suma locked inside the house since they had both become mentally unstable after Vijayan's murder.
After the police found the two women in the rented house in Kakkattukada, Vidhya was left in the care of her relatives. However, murder charges have been slapped on Suma and Vishnu in connection with Vijayan’s murder.
Tracing the evidence
Discovering the bodies of Vijayan and the newborn proved crucial. The police knew the murder charges would only stick if the skeletal remains were dug out.
They took Nitheesh, who was in judicial custody at the Peermade sub-jail, back to police custody on Saturday (March 9). On Sunday (March 10), he was taken to the crime spot in Kakkattukada.
As identified by Nitheesh, a newly-plastered portion of the floor in the room was dug up by the police and the forensic officials.
From the five-feet-long and nearly three-feet wide pit, the police found the body of Vijayan kept in a securely-taped cardboard box. The skeletal remains, bent and smashed, were found inside the box. Besides bones and skull, belt, pants and Vijayan’s footwear were also recovered.
Idukki intelligence Deputy Superintendent Santosh Kumar said the postmortem and DNA reports of Vijayan's skeletal remains are awaited.
“The DNA test will confirm whether the body was Vijayan’s and the cause of the death can be confirmed through the postmortem report," he said.
The police, however, could not trace the infant's remains despite an intense search at the cowshed of Vishnu’s previous house in Sagara Junction, where the accused is said to have buried the body.
Intelligence sources said Nitheesh’s contradictory statements are confusing the investigation team as he had later given the statement that the body buried in the cowshed was dug out and burned. The burnt remains were later immersed in the Ayyappancoil river by Vijayan, Nitheesh told the police.
Ernakulam Range Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Putta Vimaladitya, who interrogated the accused on Tuesday, told media persons that a special team comprising officials of various departments will be formed to investigate the Kattappana double murder case. He said the police are interrogating Suma, Vishnu and Vidhya to confirm the statements given by Nitheesh in connection with the infant's murder.
With the custody period of Nitheesh expected to end on Wednesday, the police have expedited proceedings to uncover the mystery in the newborn’s death.