Sherlock style: How bacteria, fungus helped Bengaluru cops solve murder mystery
- The Bengaluru City police zeroed in on a ragpicker who murdered a resident in Tilaknagar.
- It was the bacteria and the fungus at the crime scene which led them to the murderer.
- 19-year-old Ganesh aka Chappar Ganesh is in police custody and has confessed to the crime.
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The Bengaluru police solved a murder case in which they had little or no leads. While investigating the murder of M. Mani, a resident of Tilaknagar, police officials were looking for signs in a scene that didn’t show murder for gain. Instead, the crime scene inspired the police to pursue a different course of action: to find out if anyone had a personal grudge against the deceased.For a while, police officials conducted interviews with those close to the murder victim. During their investigation, they found that Mani didn’t have rivalries with her neighbours and mostly kept herself busy with religious activities. It seemed like a dead end case until they found two pieces of evidence presented by the deceased’s children.
On April 6, a day after the murder, Mani’s daughter told the police that her late mother’s gold bangles were missing. Prior to this, the victim’s son Srinivas Kishore, a software engineer told the police that her gold chain was not to be seen. This information spurred the police to conduct a thorough forensic investigation of the scene.
According to Bangalore Mirror, Deputy Commissioner of police (south-east) MB Boralingaiah, directed forensic experts to conduct a high-intensity x-ray and chemical analysis. After this, they found bacteria and fungus which are most commonly found among rag pickers, beggars or labourers.
A few days later, the police investigated beggars in the vicinity and found 19-year-old Ganesh aka Chappar Ganesh living in a dilapidated building. The police found 900 grams of gold jewellery worth Rs 28 lakh from him. They also arrested a scrap shop owner Chinnaraju alias Madu, 30, and his friend Shaktivelu, 31 in connection to the case.
Ganesh had entered Mani’s house on April 5 when the residents were fast asleep. He told the police that he stole her gold chain using a cutter and was about to steal her bangles as well but she woke up and resisted him, which is when he killed her. He added that he also locked Mani's door from the outside and left the house.
