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Mobile phones, bloody sheets: Chennai police solve gruesome twin murder in hours
The victims and the main accused, Lal Krishna, had known each other for more than a decade as employer and driver-cum-domestic help in Chennai.
The May 7 double-murder of a well-to-do couple in the heart of Chennai may have been straightforward case to solve but its closure - in a matter of hours - was due to the speed in which police caught the two accused before they could flee to Nepal.
The murdered couple and the two accused
The victims and the main accused, Lal Krishna, had known each other for over a decade as employer and driver-cum-domestic help. A police official involved in the investigation described them as 'rich' and their death as gruesomely motivated by obtaining crores of cash that never existed.
The two accused, who according to police, do not have a criminal history, left behind a trail of evidence in the victims' home in Chennai’s Mylapore area, where they were murdered. The bodies were buried in their farmhouse Nemilicheri on the city's East Coast Road.
Chartered accountant Srikanth (60) was a director and vice president of several companies and most recently the head of corporate finance of a Gujarat-based firm. He lived in a posh duplex with his wife Sunantha (55).
How the crime was planned
In November last year, the couple had gone to the United States to visit their children. Srikanth came back to Chennai alone in March, police said.
Krishna, as always, was driving Srikanth in a silver Innova when he heard him discussing a ₹40 crore property deal, police said, citing that as a reason for plotting the crime. Krishna roped in a friend, P Ravi, to share in the spoils.
Srikanth had gone back to the US in the same month and the duo was waiting for them to return.
"On May 4, Srikanth called Krishna and (asked) him to pick them up from the Chennai airport on May 7. Within those three days they started preparing for the murder," said a senior police official not wishing to be named.
The murders take place
From California, the couple landed in Chennai around 3.30 am on May 7. Srikanth called his son, Shashant, from the airport and told him Krishna had picked them up. At 8 am, Shashant called but his mother and father's phones were switched off. So, he called Krishna. First Krishnan told him that his parents were sleeping at home and that he was out to buy vegetables.
Police said when Shashant called again at 10 am Krishna’s responses started becoming inconsistent. Shashant began to suspect something was amiss so he asked relatives living in Adyar (another Chennai neighbourhood) to check on his parents. The relatives went to Mylapore and saw the house locked and the Innova missing. They called the 100 helpline after 11am, police said.
When police broke into the house, all the bureaus were open and the suitcases were strewn around. That’s when investigations at the crime scene began.
Police begin investigations
Police found faint blood stains inside a utility room on the ground floor and on the drain holes inside a toilet on the first floor. There were no bodies. "These were tell-tale signs that they have been badly injured and another obvious sign was that bedsheets were missing from all the beds," the official said, adding that nine kg of gold and about 60 kg of silver had been stolen.
"They had used the sheets to either wrap the stolen jewellery or wrap murdered bodies." Later police would find out the injuries were so severe, the accused dragged Sunantha to the bathroom to wash away the incessantly flowing blood.
Abduction or murder?
"Initially, we thought it was a case of abduction," the official quoted above said. Police proceeded to the farmhouse in the outskirts of the city, where they could spot a part of the ground where sand had been removed and covered freshly. Next to that a pair of gloves and a burnt cell phone was found. Clothes used to clean the blood were half-burnt. The duo had dug the pits earlier and kept it ready before the couple arrived from the US to bury them. "When we saw this, we confirmed that definitely a murder has been committed," additional commissioner of police (south) N Kannan said at a press conference on Monday.
But police hadn't seen the bodies yet because they had to wait for permission from the revenue department to exhume them. Their priority at that stage was to catch the accused before they escaped.
"The accused knew their crime would be solved but they didn’t anticipate we would catch them so soon. They thought they had less than 8-hour of time to reach Hyderabad, leave the car there and their plan was to take the train to Gorakhpur where there are taxis to go to the Nepal border. The murder happened early morning. We got a grip of the case around 1pm and we caught them by 5.30pm from Andhra Pradesh," the official said.
How the police tracked down the accused
Police accessed data from Krishna’s phone though it was switched off. Their first clue was a message from a FASTag toll booth at Chennai’s Uthani which connects ECR to the city. Police wouldn’t say how but said they were able to map the route they were taking to Andhra and the speed in which they drove the Innova. "They used the same car, that's how naive they are," Chennai police said, noting that they then informed their Andhra Pradesh counterparts and the accused were caught in Ongole on the highway.
The big question
Why did the accused risk murdering the couple when they could have just broken into the house, especially since Krishna had been given a room and had the keys to the car?
"This is the first question that came to our mind. We didn't know the reason until we caught the accused. He didn’t care about the jewellery. His aim was ₹40 crore. He’s asked for ₹40 crore and then murdered him. He knew he couldn’t leave a rich, influential man alive, else Srikanth would have ensured he was caught."
Lal Krishna’s father, Padam Lal, 65, is the security guard of the farmhouse. Every year, he goes on leave for 15 days to go to his native country of Nepal. He was on leave during this time so his son and the main accused, Krishan, had the keys to the farmhouse.
"The accused wanted money and they used this opportunity," police said. Both of them speak Tamil fluently. Krishna was an on-call driver, separated from his wife while his 15-year-old son studies in Darjeeling. "He believed he could have settled with this ₹40 crore in Darjeeling."
On Monday, a preliminary postmortem listed the cause of death as excessive blood loss due to injuries to the head and stab wounds to the side of the neck.
The accused used a wooden log to beat the hapless couple on their head.
"And (the accused used) a traditional Nepali knife (kukri) to slit the side of their neck. Both of them had similar injuries," the official said. The couple’s children, who are shocked that people whom they trusted murdered their parents, reached Chennai on Monday night to complete the last rites.
