Karnataka

Bengaluru International Airport hoax call probe unravels murder

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Bengaluru: The investigation into hoax threat messages, which claimed to bomb flights at the Kempegowda International Airport on Friday night, has led to a sordid saga of murder, impersonation and infatuation.

The KIA police have arrested Gokul (29), a sales executive of a private firm, for allegedly sending the threat messages. During the interrogation, he also confessed to murdering his wife in July.

Gokul, a resident of an apartment in HSR Layout and who hails from Thrissur, allegedly sent the threat messages to the airport terminal manager on Friday night, claiming that explosives had been placed in three flights that were ready to take off.

Gokul had also sent the voter ID of his friend Saju Jose to the terminal manager, to make it look like Jose was behind the messages. But the police, who questioned Jose, ruled out his role as he was not even aware of the telephone number from which the messages were sent. The police, who continued their probe, zeroed in on the location of the mobile phone, which was operated from the same apartment complex but from a different flat.

The police picked up Gokul and subjected him to interrogation. That is when he confessed to not just the threat messages, but also to murdering his wife Anuradha three months ago.

“He confessed that he hit his wife’s head with a metal Ganesha idol and killed her on July 27. He had concocted a story that she accidentally fell in the balcony and died of head injuries.

The local police did not pursue with the case. A separate investigation has now been launched on the procedural lapse by the local police,” a senior police officer said. During the interrogation, Gokul reportedly told the police that he killed his wife as she was getting drunk and was quarrelling with him every day. “Even on July 27, she allegedly got drunk and fought with Gokul. He attacked her with the idol and killed her,” the officer said.

Gokul and Anuradha, who hailed from Ranchi in Jharkhand, fell in love while studying in Delhi and got married in 2009. They shifted to Bengaluru just a few months ago. The couple has a child, which is being taken care of by Anuradha’s mother in Ranchi.

Gokul besotted with former classmate?
Though Gokul (29), a sales executive in a private firm who allegedly sent threat messages to the Kempegowda International Airport on Friday night, has claimed that he killed his wife as she was fighting with him after getting drunk, the police are grilling him to know whether he hatched the murder plot as he was interested in wooing his schoolmate.

Police sources said that the probe so far has suggested that he was interested in Jasmine (name changed), who was his classmate at high school in Thrissur. “They had lost contact after Gokul left for Delhi for studies. She got married in 2007 and had moved to Bengaluru, while Gokul got married in 2009 and was working in Delhi. In 2011, he got in touch with Jasmine through a social networking site,” an official said.

“In 2013, he had tried to create a rift in Jasmine’s family by writing letters to the Father of a church in Thrissur, which Jasmine and her husband visited regularly. He had written separate letters in the names of Jasmine and her husband to the Father, saying that they were facing problems in their married life. The Father had counseled them and this had led to misunderstanding between the couple,” the official said.

When Gokul was transferred to Bengaluru a few months ago, he rented a house in the same apartment where Jasmine lived. “This arouses our suspicion that he was interested in her. He managed to take a photo of the voter ID of Jasmine’s husband when he visited their house once. He used the same ID to get a SIM card, from which he sent the hoax messages,” he said.

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