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Chennai triple murder: Police question victim’s estranged wife, her brothers
The bodies of Dileep Chand, wife Pushpa Bai and son Shrishith were found dead after their eldest daughter Pinki went to check on them, as they had not responded to her persistent telephone calls.
Police have registered a murder case after they found an elderly couple and their son were shot dead inside their apartment late at night on Wednesday at Sowcarpet, a north Indian settlement in north Chennai.
The bodies of Dileep Chand (74), wife Pushpa Bai (70) and son Shrishith (40) were found after their eldest daughter Pinki went to check on them, as they had not responded to her persistent telephone calls.
“It is a murder case. All three members of the family have been shot dead,” said V Balakrishnan, joint commissioner, Chennai Police, who is heading the probe.
Bullet wounds were found on Chand’s chin and on Bai and Shrishith’s foreheads.
“Closed-circuit TV (CCTV) footage was used to zero in on Shrishith’s wife, her two brothers and three other men, who are considered to be prime suspects,” said a police official, requesting anonymity.
Eyewitnesses and family members have told the police that Shrishith and his wife would often squabble. Their two daughters, aged 13 and 11 years, live with his estranged wife in Pune.
“Her family members had filed a dowry harassment case against Shrishith in Pune,” the official said. “The couple was married for 14 years and the two families had protracted disputes,” he said.
A divorce case is also pending at a family court in Chennai, according to local media reports.
“Her brothers would often come to the victims’ house asking for money,” he added.
“They were a middle-class family,” the officer said.
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“Shrishith was addicted to drugs and his parents were trying to help him overcome his addiction,” he added.
The deceased, who ran a finance company, lived on the first floor of a four-storey apartment at Vinayaga Maestri Street in Sowcarpet, a congested commercial neighbourhood, which generations of families from Gujarat and Rajasthan have called their home.
Fingerprint experts, sniffer dogs and forensic experts were deployed late at night on Wednesday for early detection of clues into the murder cases.
Later, the three bodies were sent to a state government -run hospital for post-mortem examination.
