Killed duo for property, says Tirupattur woman

Even as the interrogations with Kala are under way, police are continuing their search for Ekambaram (40), the boyfriend of Kala, and Moorthy, another hired killer

Kala confessed that she developed intimacy with Ekambaram when he frequented her house to sell coconut saplings. She said that though she lived with Ekambaram in Kerala, the fact that her husband – the deceased Shanmugam - had married again, triggered a fear in her that he might bequeath the five-and-a-half-acre farm to his second wife Sujatha or her children. So, she colluded with Ekambaram, who arranged for the contract killers, and hatched a plan to murder Shanmugam and Sujatha, said Kala.

She said she opened the door for Ekambaram and the two killers, Moorthy and Nagaraj, on Thursday night, but then things went wrong after Shanmugam started shouting while he was being killed. His screams woke up Sujatha, who tried to save him, and the gang killed her also. In the melee, Nagaraj suffered injury to his leg, which foiled his escape from the spot, and was caught by the public.

Police on questioning Nagaraj found out that he was running a massage parlour in Erode, while the other escaped killer, identified as Moorthy, owned a travels company in the same town.