Thiruvananthapuram: After a brutal murder of three members of a family running a laundry unit in Kottayam on Sunday night, Kerala police chased the suspect for more than 2,500km away from the city to Firozabad in Uttar Pradesh (UP).
In a crime that seems to have borrowed bits from a movie script, the suspect deliberately left one of the stolen mobile phones of the murdered family in a train. That left cyber police in a tangle as the mobile signals they were tracking moved along with the train.
Police believe that the family enterprise’s staff member from UP, Nihal Singh, murdered Mooleparambil Lalason (71), his wife Prasannakumari (54) and their son Praveen Lal (29) before making off with some valuables and mobile phones from the house. Singh had joined the laundry unit as a staff member only a few months ago and could hardly speak Malayalam.
The murder was particularly brutal, with the suspect first using an axe to murder the son and then the parents, breaking their bones, giving them electric shocks and pouring acid on the bodies. Other staff members who worked alongside Singh said he had been a quiet person and that Prasannakumari often gave him homemade curry to eat with the rice he cooked.
He had falsely given his name as Jai Singh, but police believe that he is Nihal Singh from Firozabad and are on his trail. Police believe that the murder was planned and the killer had one or two accomplices.
The cremation of the couple and their son was conducted on Tuesday, with the couple’s younger son Vipin Lal lighting the funeral pyre. Lalason spoke to Lal, who was away that day, over the phone at around 10.30pm on Sunday.
The suspect had a fake identification card with him that gave his name as Jai Singh, prompting police to believe he has a criminal background. He is also believed to have been sleeping on pavements in and around Kottayam before he came to work at the laundry. Police suspect he may have worked in Thrissur and Kollam before coming to Kottayam.
The incident has rung alarm bells among Kerala families that have hired workers from other states. Kerala’s shortage of workers for odd jobs has seen a proliferation of workers move in from northern states. There are no firm statistics on the number of such workers, but some estimates put the number at more than one million.
The number of out-of-state workers has risen so much in places such as Kaladi and Aluva that some road signage boards and bus boards have been displayed in Hindi for their benefit. Incidentally, the family in Kottayam had also managed to recruit Singh by putting up a notice in Hindi, calling for a laundry assistant.
