65-year-old found dead with hands, legs tied

Police said the victim P Shanthi was the daughter of Prahladnath and Lakshmi. She was usually aided in her daily routine by her uncle Somasundaram and his son Ramesh. 

Though Shanti’s father and mother had died 10 and five years ago respectively, she continued to live alone at her house. Police said Ramesh made frequent visits to Shanthi’s house and helped her out with her daily needs. 

Ramesh had called up Shanthi on Sunday night but the mobile phone went unanswered. He again tried to reach her on the residence landline telephone on Monday morning and that too failed to get any response. Growing suspicious, Ramesh went to the house but found the metal gate of the independent house and the main door unlocked. 

When he went inside, he found Shanthi lying dead with bleeding injuries and with her legs and hands tied up. There were also signs of strangulation.

Police suspect the murderer had used a screwdriver to stab Shanthi on the head and that there were signs of a struggle. Shanthi also had a deep cut on her head, police said. The Teynampet police recovered the body and sent it for post-mortem to Government Royapettah Hospital. Police have picked up fingerprints from the scene of crime and are collecting private CCTV footages from the locality to find out who all paid a visit to Shanthi house in the last one week. 

The ancestral house of Shanthi was constructed on one ground of plot and the property prices in the area was very high. Police also suspect grabbing the high-value property as a possible motive for the murder. Initial assessment by the police point to a possible murder for gain. However, no one except the victim knew about the valuables kept in the house. So, police could not immediately ascertain whether the murderer had taken away any valuables.

The city police have almost given up on two similar cases of murder of the elderly

One murder was reported in November 2006, when a couple was murdered inside their house in Velachery and in another in March this year, a 72-year-old woman was killed for gain at her apartment in Egmore. City police have not been able to crack the Velachery double murder even after 10 years after the crime. 

A lot of planning had gone into the murder and the assailants had done a thorough job. They had locked the house from outside and took away the couple’s car, letting the neighbours believe that the couple had gone out of town. The murderers had also kept the LPG valve open and even damaged a power plug, hoping that some sparks from the electrical unit would cause a fire and burn down the house. The LPG leak also effectively masked the stench of decomposing bodies.

In the more recent case of the Egmore murder of Sharadha, a woman hailing from Thrissur and who stayed with her granddaughter, police initially claimed a breakthrough in the case. However, the investigation dragged on for several months and nothing substantial came of it. Sharadha’s four-gram gold jewellery was stolen and her earlobes with earrings were also cut off making it a case of murder for gain.