CHENNAI: The wife of an ex-serviceman and her lover were among the eight persons arrested by Tiruvallur in his murder case. Initially assumed the man was killed in a road accident, a post-mortem revealed he was beaten to death.

Venkatesan (47) belongs to Muthukondapuram village. His body was found on the road by villagers on February 3, who assumed he was run over by a vehicle.

After the post-mortem findings, Venkatesan’s wife, Sandhya, gave contradictory replies during questioning. Suspicious of her replies, police found Sandhya was in an affair with a man, Lokesh.

Further probe revealed that Sandhya, Lokesh and his brother, Shanmugham, decided to bump off Venkatesan by running him over with a vehicle and make it look like an accident, but beat him to death and dumped his body on the road.