‘Karnataka doctor allegedly kills wife to get treasure’: Police

Karnataka police have arrested a doctor for allegedly murdering his wife by injecting high doses of drugs in Davanagere district on Sunday

Karnataka police have arrested a doctor for allegedly murdering his wife by injecting high doses of drugs in Davanagere district on Sunday. The arrest comes nine months after the woman’s death and police said that the murder was carried out as part of a black magic ritual.

Image for representation. (File photo)

Police have identified the suspect in custody as 45-year-old Dr Channakeshappa who was practising medicine in Rameshwara village in Nyamathi taluk. His wife, Shilpa, died on February 11 following an alleged overdose.

Following her death, in his statement to police, Channakeshappa claimed that Shilpa was suffering from low blood pressure. On February 11, he gave her an injection of Dexamethasone following which Shilpa became too sick and died on the way to the hospital.

Shilpa’s parents lodged a complaint alleging their daughter was murdered. In the initial police investigation, the doctor was able to evade arrest but policemen later raised suspicion about his movements.

The investigation later found that he was practising black magic in recent years and had been visiting several black magic practitioners in the past year. It was during one such interaction when he was advised to sacrifice his wife to access tressure, said police. The doctor then decided to offer his wife as a human sacrifice and killed her with an overdose, police said.

The Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) confirmed Shilpa’s death as a result of a drug overdose, following which the police took the accused into custody. The doctor has been charged with murder.

This incident comes weeks after Belagavi police started a probe into a suspected case of black magic after a two-year-old girl, who was found unconscious in a sugarcane field in Halyal village near Athani on September 23, died on October 1. Police said that there were signs of torture, especially burn marks on the girl’s body.