69-year-old woman’s murder in Bengaluru: Daughter, grandson arrested after five years

The case was cracked after the investigation was resumed following a review of pending cases

A woman and her son, who have been on the run for five years after the man killed his grandmother in 2017, were arrested from Kolhapur, Maharashtra, recently. The arrested have been identified as Shashikala, 46, and Sanjay, 26.

In May 2017, Naveen, a landlord in Kengeri Satellite Town had approached the police saying his tenants had been missing since February that year and a foul smell had been emanating from the house. Police broke open the house, and in a locked room they found two drums, a bloodied saree, cement sacks and a foul smell.

Police recovered a mobile phone from the room of Sanjay, an aeronautical engineering student, and tracked down Sanjay’s friend, Nandeesh, to whom the last call was made. Nandeesh spilled the beans under sustained interrogation, and led the police to the body of Shantakumari, then 69, buried in the flooring of the wardrobe.

Police had recovered skeletal remains of the woman and arrested Nandeesh who had helped his friend Sanjay in burying the body and filed a chargesheet.

Sanjay and his mother Shashikala had approached the landlord in February 2017 and took a loan of ₹50,000 citing an emergency, and said they were going to Maharashtra and would return soon, never to come back again. All efforts by Kengeri police to track down the mother-son duo yielded little result, and the case had gone cold.

Recently, a review of pending cases revived the investigation into the case, and this time they tracked them down to Kolhapur, where they were working as a waiter and a cleaner in a hotel for the past five years.

Shantakumari was a very orthodox woman and was opposed to bringing outside food home. On the fateful day in February 2017, Sanjay had brought a parcel of gobi manchurian home to which his grandmother took objection to and allegedly threw it on Sanjay’s face.