Man held for college student’s murder day after body was found

Coimbatore: The Coimbatore rural police cracked the murder of a 20-year-old college student by arresting a close relative of the victim in Dindigul on Sunday.
The body of the girl was found at Poosaripatti, near Pollachi, on Saturday evening.

The accused, T Sathish Kumar, 29, of Nellukulikadu at Vadakadu village in Oddanchatram in Dindigul district, was in love with the girl for the past eight years.

Three years ago, Sathish Kumar had married another woman as the victim’s parents had refused to marry her of to him.

However, Sathish Kumar continued his relationship with the girl even after his marriage, police said. He murdered the girl on Friday after he learned that her family was arranging a marriage for her.

The rural police arrested Sathish Kumar, who confessed to the crime, and seized a car belonging to him on Sunday. The knife used to murder the girl was also seized from the car.

The deceased girl was a native of Oddanchatram in Dindigul district.

According to police, Sathish Kumar, a money lender, was residing in a house along with his wife and one-year-old daughter at Kailash Nagar at Koduvayur in Palakkad district in Kerala. He was summoned by the Kattoor police soon after the girl went missing.

Sathish Kumar along with his family visited the police station on Saturday morning for inquiry. Admitting that he was in love with the girl before his marriage, Sathish Kumar claimed that he didn’t have any contact with her after his marriage. So, police let him off from the police station.

Meanwhile, the girl’s body was found in an isolated place at Poosaripatti village near Gomangalam on Saturday around 5.30 pm and Gomangalam police registered a case under section 302 (murder) of the Indian Penal Code around 6.30pm. Coimbatore superintendent of police Sujit Kumar formed four special teams to nab the accused.

Police sources said one of the police teams collected phone call details and locations of the deceased girl and Sathish Kumar. The needle of suspicion pointed towards Sathish Kumar after the phone records showed that he and the girl travelled together on the fateful day.

On Sunday morning, police picked up Sathish Kumar from Dindigul district.

In his confessional statement, Sathish Kumar said he had spent lavishly on the college girl even after his marriage. He had allegedly bought 10 sovereigns of gold ornaments and costly clothes for her.

Meanwhile, the parents of the girl had fixed a marriage for her with another youth on June 13.

But the student kept demanding 10 more sovereigns of gold ornaments and lakh of rupees from him. Unable to bear the mental torture, he murdered her inside his car using a knife and abandoned the body in an isolated place near Gomangalam.