A man’s ability to win a gambling game called rice pulling cost his life. The City Crime Branch police solved his murder with the arrest of seven people, who were his playmates, in the city recently. The police said the deceased, Nagendra Gupta, a resident of Girinagar, played and won the stakes every day. This did not go down well with his friends and accused in the murder: Murthy (31) from K.R. Puram, Srinivas alias Seena (27) from Tamil Nadu, Dinesh Kumar alias Butto (29) from Lingarajpuram, Jeeva (27) from Lingarajpuram, Hemanth (26) from Prakashnagar, Shankar (35) from Basweshwaranagar and Nagaraju (37) from HAL.
They presumed that Nagendra had hidden all the money buried under his house. They hatched a plot to kidnap him and recover their money. But it ended in murder. DCP (Crime) Krishnam Raju told Deccan Chronicle, “The accused had planned that some of them would kidnap and drug Nagendra, while others would go to his house to search for the hidden cash. On May 18 around 9.30 am, the accused went to Nagendra’s house in a car and asked him to accompany them. They took him to near the Ganapathi temple in Girinagar and sedated him with chloroform.But when he collapsed, they panicked and suffocated him to death. To destroy evidence, they took the body in another car to Kamanur Cross near Mulabagilu and dumped the body,” he said.
The police, who traced the body at Mulabagilu, informed Nagendra’s family, who thought he had died after a heart attack as he had no visible injuries on his body. They also performed his last rites. But the police registered a case of unnatural death and tracked down the accused after investigation. The police recovered chloroform and the two cars used in the crime from the accused. The accused are in judicial custody.