Attack on Mahantesh: Hotel videos led cops to witness

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A security guard at Atria Hotel played a crucial role in helping the police track down the lone eyewitness in the murderous attack on KAS officer S.P. Mahantesh.

The witness, a two-wheeler rider who had gone to pick up his fiancée from the hotel, told the security guard that a man was lying unconscious on the road after an attack by some people who had come in a car.

How the police tracked down this lone witness makes for an interesting story. City Police Commissioner Jyothiprakash Mirji said a team of young, tech-savvy sub-inspectors were made part of a 200-strong force to crack the case.

The officers learnt that the hotel security guard could not take down the scooter’s registration number as it was raining heavily that night. The woman, who was picked up by the scooterist, was attending a conference at the hotel, which was hosting a number of such meetings that day. As most of the conferences are recorded, police took all the compact discs hoping to pick out the woman.

The officers went through the CDs along with the security guard and zoomed in on each woman at the conferences. After hours of search, they finally could identify her. After contacting the event organisers, police got in touch with the scooter rider’s fiancée and called her for questioning.

The woman, who was reluctant to give details initially, told them that the scooter rider was her fiancé. The police then summoned the witness. He gave the officers a rough sketch of the accused and, more crucially, told them that an Indica car used in the attack had a dent on the bonnet.

When the information was passed on to all police stations, Vyalikaval police found that an autorickshaw driver had grown rich overnight and was driving an Indica with a distinct dent on its bonnet. That was the lucky break the police needed.

But the auto driver, Ayyappa (28), a slumdweller in Vyalikaval, had gone away after the murder and his mobile phone was not reachable. Once he was traced to Chennai, he was brought to the city and interrogated. That is when he spilt the beans that he knew the main accused Kiran Kumar and that he and two others attacked the officer on the night of May 15 while he was returning home from Sahakarnagar.

Mr Mirji congratulated the security guard and the Vyalikaval police in helping solve the case. The identity of the security guard, the woman and her fiancé was not disclosed for security reasons.