Photo: (Left) the four victims in the family and (Right) accused Libeesh arrested by police.
A bizarre and diabolical plot over ‘theft of black magic powers’ is said to be at the root of the brutal murder of a family of four members in Idukki district of Kerala, police claimed.
On August 1, horrified neighbours and local police officials in Kambakakanam area of Vannapuram had chanced upon a filled-up pit in the backyard of a home out of which they unearthed mutilated bodies of four members of a family. The murder victims were identified as Kanat Krishnan (50), his wife Susheela (47), their son Arjun (17) and daughter Arsha (21).
On Monday, a team of police officials led by KB Venugopal, Idukki district police chief, claimed to have cracked the case after the arrest of 28-year-old Libeesh, one of the two accused in the case. Venugopal, in a press conference, told reporters that Aneesh, who is still on the run, and his friend Libeesh planned and executed the murders to take revenge for ‘stealing’ the former’s ‘black magic powers.’
According to the police version, Aneesh, a resident of Adimali in Idukki district, was for many years an apprentice of Krishnan, who’s reportedly adept at performing black magic rituals. After learning the rituals from Krishnan for a couple of years, Aneesh went to another teacher to learn more powers with an aim of setting up his own branch. However, Aneesh reportedly realised that his rituals were not working and producing the desired results because Krishnan had ‘stolen’ the powers from him. Hence, the only alternative left to him was to snatch back those powers from Krishnan by killing him.
“Aneesh believed that by murdering Krishnan, his black magic powers would come back to him. He also had an eye on the money and jewels that Krishnan had in his possession,” Venugopal said at the press conference.
The two accused, Aneesh and Libeesh, knew each other as they worked for a long time at a borewell-digging firm, said police. On the midnight of July 29, police said the duo, intoxicated, reached Krishnan’s house with an elaborate plan to murder his family. The house’s relative obscurity in the neighbourhood helped the accused. With the help of a shock observer pipe retrieved from a bike, Aneesh first hit Krishnan on the head as the latter came through the kitchen back-door. The duo then proceeded to kill the rest of the family by assaulting them with sharp weapons including a kitchen knife and a hammer.
Police claimed the duo left the house after killing all the four members and went to a nearby river-bank to take a bath. Suspecting that the bodies’ foul smell could give it away, the duo returned the next night to bury the bodies in a pit in the backyard. The accused also took away some jewels and money present in the victims’ home.
These details of the murder plot, police said, were pieced together from the confession of Libeesh. A manhunt is on the way to nab Aneesh, officials added.