RJ’s murder: SIT ignores ex-wife’s clean chit for prime suspect Sathar

TIRUVANANTHAPURAM : The Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the murder former RJ Rajesh aka ‘Rasikan’ Rajesh on Saturday refused to take at face value the statements given by the woman - who was purportedly  in a relationship with the deceased - absolving her former husband Abdul Sathar  of involvement in awarding the ‘hit job’.The woman, also a dance teacher, gave the clean chit to Sathar during a chat with a Qatar-based radio channel on Friday. Even as she claimed Sathar is not a diabolical person, the woman said she and Rajesh were just good friends. 

Investigation Officer (IO) P Anilkumar, Attingal DySP, told Express  the police would rather not take the woman’s statements at their face value and they viewed it as an attempt to bail out her beleaguered former husband.“We are going ahead with the investigaton in the case as we have secured hard evidence against Sathar and his contractor Salih Bin Jalal. The state police brass has already got in touch with the Qatar Police to get the duo extradited  to India for further proceedings. Both of them are also under the scanner of police in Doha. We are closing in on them and it is just a matter of time before they will be hauled up,” the IO said.

Despite the best efforts on the part of the state police, with various teams fanning out into Mumbai. Karnataka and Chennai,  the members of the quotation gang involved in Rajesh’s killing have continued to evade arrest. In a related development, the police on Friday took four persons into custody to find out whether they had been in touch with the quotation gang.