BENGALURU: An itinerant fortune teller failed to foresee the consequences of his deeds when he robbed gold from two women on the pretext of performing puja to ensure their families would not be affected by death and misfortune.
The suspect, BM Venkataramanappa, 42, from Chintamanai of Chikkaballapur, has been arrested and lodged in Central Prison, Bengaluru.
Police said Venkataramanappa is a professional Budubudike. Budubudikes are fortune-tellers who go around playing a kettle drum offering to perform special pujas and rituals to ward off upcoming ominous events and herald fortune.
He was caught in connection with the probe into the robbery of 100g of gold from a woman in Bengaluru on March 2, 2024. During police inquiry, he revealed that he had similarly robbed another woman in 2020.
On the afternoon of March 2, 2024, Venkataramanappa appeared outside a house in Satish Reddy Layout, Hongasandra, southeast Bengaluru, and hearing the rattle of his kettle drum, homemaker Gouramma, 37, came out.
Venkataramanappa announced that he could foresee a death in her family in the next three days. Gouramma was worried because coincidentally another fortune-teller had also predicted the death three months earlier. “Some relatives of yours have done black magic on your family. In three days, one death will happen. Thereafter, one after another will die,” Venkataramanappa said with closed eyes.
Gouramma, a mother of two teenage daughters and wife of a private company employee, let Venkataramanappa into her house and asked for remedies. Venkataramanappa told her that he could perform a puja. He took a pot from his bag and asked Gouramma to place her gold jewellery in it. When Gouramma put her gold into the pot, Venkataramanappa asked her to light incense sticks. He performed aarati and returned the pot to Gouramma with an assurance that the black magic’s effects had been negated.
“Venkataramanappa told me to open the pot after some time and left. When I opened it, I found some rice in it and the jewellery was missing,” Gouramma, who then filed a police complaint, said.
According to police, Venkataramanappa’s revisit to the location helped them in nabbing him. “We had CCTV footage showing his face. But we could not trace him since there were no other details. When he returned, our informants alerted us and we caught him,” an investigating officer said.
“During his interrogation, Venkataramanappa confessed to robbing 20g of gold from another woman in 2020 in a similar way. We have recovered 115g of gold from him and will return them to the victims,” police said.
