Arbaaz was killed, girlfriend’s family hired contract killers: Karnataka cops confirm

Mangalore Today News Network

Belagavi, Oct 08, 2021: Days after the decapitated body of 24-year-old Arbaaz Aftab was found on the railway tracks in Belagavi, his head dismembered and his hands tied, the Karnataka police have finally made arrests in the case and have identified several accused. The police in a new press release have said that Arbaaz was murdered by contract killers because of his interfaith relationship with his girlfriend. The killers were hired by his girlfriend’s parents after he refused to break up with her on her parents’ insistence, the police said. This is the allegation that Arbaaz’s family has made since his death. The police have now arrested Arbaaz’s girlfriend’s parents Eerappa and Susheela Kumbhar, member of a fringe Hindu group Sri Ram Sena Hindustan who was given the contract to kill Arbaaz and seven other contract killers.

 

The police have confirmed that after extensive investigation and recovery of material and digital evidence, they found that the woman’s family opposed the relationship and approached Maharaja Nagappa alias Pundalik Mutgekar, a member of the Sri Ram Sena Hindustan, an offshoot of the Sri Ram Sene, who lives in Vattoli village of Khanapur taluk, to kill Arbaaz. According to the police, the woman’s father Eerappa Basavanne Kumbhar and mother visited Pundalik alias Maharaj. Absconding till now, Pundalik was one of the people who was first arrested, and police say he has named the others in the case.

Pundalik is believed to have confessed to the police that he and the woman’s father, Eerappa, called Arbaaz to Khanapur, where the woman’s family lived, and because Arbaaz refused to break up with the woman, they killed him. They then chopped his body and left him on the railway track, in order to destroy evidence.

In addition to the woman’s father Eerappa Basavanne Kumbhar and Pundalik, her mother Susheela Kumbhar has also been named as an accused, and was part of the conspiracy, police say. Other accused, the contract killers, identified as Maruti Pralhad Sugathe, Manjunatha Thukaram Gondali, Ganapathi Jnaneshwara Sugathe, Prashanth Kallappa Patil, Praveena Shankara, Qutubuddin and Shreedhara Mahadeva Doney have also been arrested.

Doctors who conducted the post mortem had told TNM that Arbaaz was stabbed and his hands were tied behind his back. "We have found stab injuries in the neck. It was a decapitated body - the head was separated from the body. There were stab injuries over the neck and backside and the hands were tied," a forensic official had told TNM.

All the accused have been booked under sections 302 (Murder), 201 (Causing disappearance of evidence of offence, or giving false information to screen offender), 341 (punishment for wrongful restraint), 120B (criminal conspircy), 384 (punishment for extortion), 388 (Extortion by threat of accusation of an offence), 149 (Every member of unlawful assembly guilty of offence committed in prosecution of common object) of the Indian Penal Code, among others.

Courtesy:The News Minute