BENGALURU: Seven months after a 44-year-old ayurveda doctor went missing and his house was mysteriously razed to the ground, police have found he was killed by a gang of painters and drivers over a property dispute.
The deceased is Anand, a resident of 9th Cross, 7th Block, Jayanagar. Police have arrested Mohammed Ghouse, 31, a resident of Sarabandepalya, Nadeem Pasha, 32, and Syed Noor Pasha alias Noor, 39, both residents of Kaverinagar in Banashankari, for killing Anand.
According to the complaint filed by Anand’s uncle Raghupatiraj, 72, a resident of Coimbatore, with Banashankari police on July 18, the two last spoke on June 1 after which the doctor’s phone remained switched off. A worried Raghupatiraj rushed to Bengaluru and found Anand’s Jayanagar house standing on a 40×40 sqft of plot demolished. He searched for him in his relatives’ and friends’ houses in vain.
On the trail of Anand, Banashankari police found he was in touch with Ghouse before his phone was switched off. Ghouse told police that Anand had sold his house to one Prasad and told him and his friends that he was going to Chennai. Police efforts to trace Anand to Chennai were in vain. The investigation hit a dead-end.
Habeas corpus in HC
Raghupatiraj and his family members filed a habeas corpus complaint in the Karnataka high court, which ordered police to trace Anand at the earliest. Police resumed the investigation and found that his phone had been switched on in Chhattisgarh in Oct. They went in search of the person using his phone and then got leads about Ghouse’s friend Syed Noor Pasha.
Police then zeroed in on Syed in the first week of Jan. He confessed that he, Ghouse and Nadeem had strangled Anand to death and dumped his body in the backwaters of Lakshmana Tirtha river in Sagarakatte, Yelawala, Mysuru.
Banashankari police detained Ghouse on Jan 8. He told police that Anand had hired him to paint his house. Ghouse knew Anand’s efforts to sell the house to Prasad was in a problem. Ghouse offered to resolve the issue. Accordingly, he took the help of two real estate brokers, finalised the house price for Rs 90 lakh, and got it registered in the name of Prasad.
The buyer paid Rs 45 lakh to Ghouse and said he would pay the rest after Anand resolved some pending issues with regard to the house. After registration, Anand shifted to a hotel in Mysuru. Without Anand’s consent, Ghouse gave the keys to Prasad and asked him to demolish the house.
Ghouse paid the two real estate brokers Rs 18 lakh and an advocate Rs 10 lakh; he kept the remaining Rs 17 lakh. Anand began demanding that he be paid the money. Ghouse realised that if Anand came to know that the Jayanagar house had been demolished, he would be in trouble. Ghouse decided take his friends Syed and Nadeem’s help to kill Anand. The trio took Anand in a car around 1am on July 9 from the Mysuru hotel on the pretext of going to Bengaluru. They strangled him when he was asleep in the car. After he died, they dumped the body into the river and escaped.
Body found in river
Banashankari police found from Yelawala police that an unidentified body in the river was traced on July 11, and as they could not identify it, they buried it. Photos of the body confirmed it was Anand’s. The case is now converted to a murder case. Since the offence happened in Mysuru, the case will be further transferred to Mysuru police, a senior police officer said.
