By IANS,
Hyderabad : Four people, including a police officer’s daughter and her husband, have been arrested for allegedly murdering an NRI, his wife and their two children after the victim demanded the return of money he had been cheated of by the accused.
The police Wednesday evening said they had taken into custody K. Madhavi, 26, who is daughter of a sub-inspector of police in Visakhapatnam, and her husband John Abraham, 27, for murdering Kadali Prasad, 45, who had been working in Dubai for 15 years, his wife K. Vijayalaxmi, 40, their son K. Ketan, 13, and daughter K. Kavitha, 11, in the intervening night of Aug 20-21 in RAK Lodge near Secunderabad railway station.
Police said Madhavi, an insurance agent whose mother is Vijayalaxmi’s sister, and Abraham eliminated the NRI family as they feared that their cheating Prasad in the name of insurance policies would come to light.
Prasad, who worked as an engineer for the Indian Oil Corporation in Dubai, had sent Rs.2 million to Madhavi during the last few years for investing in insurance policies. However, she misappropriated the money.
The engineer demanded Rs.8 million, the assured insurance amount, from Madhavi.
“Fearing that they will get a bad name in the family for not paying the money, Madhavi and her husband hatched a plan to eliminate Prasad, his wife and children,” said Additional Commissioner of Police (Crime) K. Narsimha Reddy.
John obtained a blank cheque from his friend and wrote a figure of Rs.8 million.
He gave the cheque to his friends Kranthi Kiran Rathod and K. Pradeep Kumar, both students aged 20, who were to present the same to Prasad by posing as insurance officials.
“They partied till around midnight. John mixed Ethyl alcohol in the liquor served to Prasad. When Prasad was about to leave for airport, the trio pounced on him. John took out a ‘chunni’ (scarf) and strangulated Prasad,” said the police official.
The trio came out of the room, locked it from outside and went into the second room where all the four accused attacked Vijayalaxmi and her two children and strangulated them.
The accused took away gold jewellery from the dead bodies, Rs.50,000 in cash, three cell phones, two ipods and other valuables. They locked the room from outside, went into their room and took rest till 3.30 a.m. before checking out.
The dead bodies were in the two rooms for the next day and it was only on Aug 22 that the lodge employees noticed foul smell coming from the rooms and informed the police.