DHARWAD: In a joint operation Dharwad district police and Hubballi-Dharwad Police have cracked two cases of murders and arrested six persons who were allegedly involved in both the cases.
Dharwad SP Lokesh Jagalasar said on Tuesday that the half burnt bodies of a 59-year-old woman and 74-year-old woman were found on May 11 and July 2 near Kadanakoppa and Tambur Cross in Kalghatagi police limits respectively. Both the bodies had injury marks and it was clear that the women were murdered.
Both were similar cases
While police could not identify the first victim, they could identify the second victim as Indirabai Pawar, a resident of Ishwar Nagar near Hubballi which comes under Hubballi-Dharwad Police Commissionerate.
Finding similarity in both the cases, police suspected that both the women could have been murdered by the same persons.
A joint police team which began investigation searched CCTV footage, interrogated several people and checked call details of several people. Based on CCTV footage, they zeroed in on Devaraj Mogaler, a resident of Ishwar Nagar who was working as a coolie.
His interrogation revealed that he along with five others - Kalappa Rogannavar, Basavaraj Walad, Md Rafi Badiger, Shivanand Kenchannavar (all from Adargunchi) and Gangappa Marathangi of Rottigawad - who were also working as daily wage labourers had hatched a plan to kill lonely woman and take away her ornaments.
They tracked the movements of a woman - who was later identified as Mahadevi Neelannavar, staying alone at Ishwar Nagar- and entered her house asking for water. When she went inside to get water, the five accused attacked her, strangled her and then packed her body in a gunny bag and shifted it in a Maruti Omni to a field near Kadanakoppa and tried to burn it. They fled with the gold ornaments and other jewellery which she was wearing.
First kill triggers second
Buoyed by the success in the first case, they set out on the second venture. On July 2, they saw a 74-year-old woman who was grazing cattle in a park and assaulted her. When she was unconscious, they packed her in the Omni and took her to the forest near Tambur Cross. On the way, they had assaulted her fatally. They dumped the body in the forest and tried to burn it.
SP Lokesh said the arrest of the five had also resulted in the recovery of the jewellery they had snatched from the victims.
IGP (Northern Range) Satishkumar has congratulated the SP, his team and the Hubballi-Dharwad Police for cracking the case.
