BENGALURU: A 47-year-old widow, who had allegedly gone missing from her sister’s house in Rajajinagar in March, was murdered over a property matter and her body was thrown into a canal near Hospet of Vijayanagara district in north Karnataka, investigation revealed.
K Seeta, who was from Mantralaya, Kurnool district in Andhra Pradesh, went missing from Ramamohanpura in Rajajinagar on March 26. “Seeta had come to our sister’s house four months ago. She went out for some work and didn’t return,” her younger brother Venkatesh Achar, a priest at a temple in Mantralaya, told Subramanyanagar police.
Cops visited the houses of Seeta’s friends and relatives in Mantralaya and elsewhere but couldn’t trace her.
Last week, Achar told Subramanyanagar police a few men from Mantralaya and other places abducted him and later released him only after getting his signature on a property document. The document read that Achar and his siblings had sold their two-acre ancestral property in Mantralaya to them and the men were selling it to a third party.
“Achar was not sure whether the property document had names and signatures of his siblings. He suspected foul play as the document date indicated it had been prepared around the time when Seeta went missing. Achar suspected his abductors could be linked with Seeta’s disappearance,” an officer said.
Kidnapped to get signature
Police detained two suspects and they spilled the beans. “They kidnapped Seeta in a car from Bengaluru on March 26 to get her signature on the document. They travelled towards Hospet and forcibly took her signature. They then made her swallow a cyanide-filled capsule and threw her body into a canal near Hospet. We need to question more persons to get clarity on the case,” a police officer said, adding they will search the canal shortly.
