The Karnataka police have solved the murder case of a businessman from Telangana whose body was found burnt in a place in Kodagu district. The police arrested his second wife and two others and the investigation revealed that the woman killed him to take property worth Rs 8 crore.
The deceased has been identified as Ramesh, 54. The investigation began on October 8 when an unidentified body was found at a coffee shop in Kodagu. Police arrested Niharika P, 29, Ramesh’s second wife; his colleagues Dr Nikhil, a veterinarian, and Ankur Rana, a resident of Bengaluru.
After the body was found, four special teams of 16 soldiers followed the trail. Investigators reviewed CCTV footage from hundreds of cameras, tracking vehicles that were traveling in the area at the time of the crime. Located just one kilometer from the highway, the crime scene prompted the police to sift through the details of thousands of vehicles in Madikeri, Suntikoppa, Kushalnagar and Madhapur to bring down possible suspects.
Finally, the investigators identified a red Benz registered in the name of Ramesh, who had recently gone missing. The Kodagu police then contacted their counterparts in Telangana to get basic information about Ramesh and his relations. As the questioning continued, suspicion centered on Niharika, her colleague Dr Nikhil, a veterinarian, and a friend, Ankur Rana. When Niharika was arrested, she confessed to the crime, police said.
Niharika, 29, hails from Mongeer Nagar in Telangana. When he was 16, his father died, and his mother remarried. Niharika married at a young age and became a mother, but later divorced due to marital problems. He was famous for his success in studies, having obtained a degree in engineering and worked in many companies, where he earned a lot of money, said the police.
However, his life took a turn for the worse when he was in Haryana, where he was involved in a financial scam that led to his imprisonment. When she was released, she returned to Bangalore and married Ramesh in 2018. Ramesh financed his lavish lifestyle, but controversy arose, especially after he rejected his offer of 8 million dollars.
Driven by rage, Niharika, with the help of Ankur, hatched a plan to kill Ramesh, police said. He allegedly lured her to Uppal, Hyderabad, on October 1, where she was strangled to death. Niharika and her companions are said to have taken the body to Kodagu, 840 kilometers away. They left it in the coffee shop, covered with a blanket, and set it on fire in an attempt to destroy the evidence, police said.
Keeping a calm face, Niharika even lodged a missing person’s report with Ramesh, police said. As the investigation continues, authorities are also looking into Ankur’s possible involvement in other cases, including the suspicious disappearance of his wife, suggesting that this high-profile case may be part of a wider criminal pattern.