Daijiworld Media Network - Madikeri (SP)
Madikeri, Feb 14: A girl student, who went missing under mysterious circumstances ten days back, was found to have been kidnapped, raped, and murdered. Her body was found from a spot near a coffee plantation.
The police personnel of Kodagu district have succeeded in cracking the case in which the said girl had gone missing from Yemmegundi Estate. They have arrested two men, who have been accused of raping the girl, killing her, and concealing her body behind a huge boulder.
The arrested men have been identified as Ranjith and Sandeep, labourers of Assam origin. They have been accused of forcibly taking the girl away to an adjacent plantation, raping her there, killing her, and then hiding her body.
Both Ranjith and Sandeep work for Karadikadu Estate near Siddapur.
The girl, who was the daughter of Chandru, working for Tata coffee plantation at Siddapur, was a second PU student. When she was returning from her college at Nelyahudikeri at around 3.30 pm on February 4, the girl had gone missing all of a sudden from near a pond near her home. At the time she went missing, she was speaking to a relative employed at Mumbai named Kishore over phone. Kishore heard the call getting cut, and the girl raising an alarm as if someone was abducting her. He immediately informed the girl's family, who searched for her but failed to get any clue. Pressure had thereafter mounted on the police to find out the whereabouts of the girl. A protest had also been held.
A complaint about the abduction of a girl from Yemmegundi Estate was registered in Siddapur police station. The district superintendent of police (SP), Dr Suman D Pannekar, formed special investigation teams under the guidance of deputy superintendent of police, Sundar Raj. The police, who undertook probe, subjected labourers working in the region to intensive questioning. During this period, Ranjith confessed that he and Sandeep had kidnapped the girl on February 4 in order to take revenge against her for insulting them. It is said that a fight had broken out between these two men and the girl student sometime back during which the girl had insulted them. They raped her, and killed her by tightening a rope around her neck, as they feared that she would reveal what had happened, said SP Dr Suman Pannekar, addressing a press meet on Wednesday.
Sandeep was later taken into custody and he too agreed that he was behind the crime. The body was found to have been hidden near a boulder at Kallagudda located little below Lord Ganapathi temple at Yemmegundi Estate.
The operation was conducted by Siddapur police sub-inspector, Dayanand, Madikeri circle inspector, Anoop Madappa, inspector of district crime intelligence bureau, M Mahesh, who headed different teams, under the guidance of deputy superintendent of police, Sundar Raj, and directions of the superintendent of police.