Blood tie: Clue from wife jails priest
CCTV Cams Belied Claim Of Violent Robbery
Sindhu.Kannan@timesgroup.com 10.04.2018
Chennai: The police played a waiting game during the past three days hoping that Vadapalani temple priest Prabhu alias Balaganesh would crack under the strain of questioning.
Investigators denied Prabhu access to television or newspapers in hospital as police sought to keep him in the dark over the death of his wife Gnanapriya.
Prabhu subsequently panicked, fearing that his wife would disclose the truth if she were alive, said an investigating officer.
As soon as police arrived at 6.30am on Thursday, he began to tremble, claiming to have been possessed by a spirit to avoid being questioned, said the officer, adding that he pretended to be unconscious at the hospital where doctors gave him only a 50% chance of survival.
Prabhu was told by police that his wife was undergoing treatment at a private hospital in Kancheepuram. Asking to see his wife, he was discharged from the hospital and escorted by a police team. Seeing the van cross the hospital, Prabhu questioned why they were not halting there. Police then disclosed his wife’s death, following which he pretended to cry for ten minutes, said the officer.
Investigators discovered in the course of the investigation that the evidence at the crime scene did not corroborate the sequence of events narrated by him.
The hammer left behind at the scene was washed, while the injury on Prabhu’s head appeared to have been self-inflicted. He also could not satisfactorily explain the presence of his wife’s blood on his person since, according to him, he was attacked first before his wife was targeted.
It was also not clear why the intruders chose that particular house when they had easy access to other houses if it was a murder for gain, said a police officer. Though Prabhu told police that the unidentified men entered the house at 1.30am, police found that CCTV footage only showed his friend Manoj Kumar arriving at around 2.15am. Police recovered the stolen gold jewellery from Manoj’s puja room underneath the deity.
During questioning, Prabhu told officers that he devised a plan to eliminate his wife three days before the murder but stopped when she awoke in the middle of the night.
MURDER IN COLD BLOOD: Priest Prabhu and his wife Gnanapriya in the days after their marriage; a neighbour found Prabhu tied up in a bathroom and his wife battered to death in their single-room house
CCTV Cams Belied Claim Of Violent Robbery
Sindhu.Kannan@timesgroup.com 10.04.2018
Chennai: The police played a waiting game during the past three days hoping that Vadapalani temple priest Prabhu alias Balaganesh would crack under the strain of questioning.
Investigators denied Prabhu access to television or newspapers in hospital as police sought to keep him in the dark over the death of his wife Gnanapriya.
Prabhu subsequently panicked, fearing that his wife would disclose the truth if she were alive, said an investigating officer.
As soon as police arrived at 6.30am on Thursday, he began to tremble, claiming to have been possessed by a spirit to avoid being questioned, said the officer, adding that he pretended to be unconscious at the hospital where doctors gave him only a 50% chance of survival.
Prabhu was told by police that his wife was undergoing treatment at a private hospital in Kancheepuram. Asking to see his wife, he was discharged from the hospital and escorted by a police team. Seeing the van cross the hospital, Prabhu questioned why they were not halting there. Police then disclosed his wife’s death, following which he pretended to cry for ten minutes, said the officer.
Investigators discovered in the course of the investigation that the evidence at the crime scene did not corroborate the sequence of events narrated by him.
The hammer left behind at the scene was washed, while the injury on Prabhu’s head appeared to have been self-inflicted. He also could not satisfactorily explain the presence of his wife’s blood on his person since, according to him, he was attacked first before his wife was targeted.
It was also not clear why the intruders chose that particular house when they had easy access to other houses if it was a murder for gain, said a police officer. Though Prabhu told police that the unidentified men entered the house at 1.30am, police found that CCTV footage only showed his friend Manoj Kumar arriving at around 2.15am. Police recovered the stolen gold jewellery from Manoj’s puja room underneath the deity.
During questioning, Prabhu told officers that he devised a plan to eliminate his wife three days before the murder but stopped when she awoke in the middle of the night.
MURDER IN COLD BLOOD: Priest Prabhu and his wife Gnanapriya in the days after their marriage; a neighbour found Prabhu tied up in a bathroom and his wife battered to death in their single-room house
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