Despite sordid details emerging since the 'human sacrifice' case came to light in Kerala's Elanthoor, details about one of the two victims, appear to remain shrouded in mystery.
Roslin, the 49-year old woman, who was the first unsuspecting casualty of the conniving trio of Bhagaval Singh, Laila and Shafi, was said to be a lottery seller while the accused claimed she had come to act in an adult movie.
While initial news reports said Roslin was a lottery seller, her daughter Manju claims her mother sold health products door-to-door for a living even as the accused insisted she was a call girl who had arrived to act in an adult film.
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The remains of Roslin, who was missing since June 8 this year, were exhumed from the backyard of a house at Elanthoor in Pathanamthitta district as part of the investigation into the human sacrifice incident involving the murder of two women. Roslin was living with her partner Sajeesh for the past six years at various places near Kalady, her daughter said, adding that she went missing on June 8.
The family is basically from Kattapana in Idukki district. Roslin left her husband around 20 years ago, along with her two children. "He used to assault her. Initially, we suspected Sajeesh that was behind her going missing. My mother gave all her ornaments to him before she went missing. He pawned a few. The rest was given to us after police became involved," Manju said. However, Kalady police have a different version. "They have been living together for the past six years. They have lived in many houses in that locality and none of the neighbours or the landlords have any bad opinion about them," police told PTI.
Police said Sajeesh is a daily wage labourer who is regular with his work and there were no assault complaints against Sajeesh as alleged by Roslin's daughter. "Mother went missing on June 8 while I was in Uttar Pradesh. I came back and filed a complaint with the police in the month of August," Manju said.
The remand report carried the gruesome manner in which Roslin was murdered by the trio at the house in Elanthoor. The remand report said Roslin was persuaded by prime accused Shafi after promising a whopping Rs 10 lakh to act in a porn film and brought to the crime site. It also said that it was Laila, who murdered her.
The women in the shocking human sacrifice case in Kerala had undergone gruesome torture as the breasts of one of them had been chopped off and the body of the other was cut into 56 pieces by the accused, according to the police remand report filed before a local court here.
Meanwhile, the family of deceased Padma (42), who used to earn her daily bread selling lottery tickets on the streets here, have been staying at Ernakulam for the past 20 days. The family from Dharmapuri in Tamil Nadu reached the state a day after she went missing. "I am working in Chennai. We came here the day after our mother went missing. We used to go to the police station everyday since September 27," Selva Raj, the youngest son of Padma told PTI.
Padma has an elder son, Settu, who is all set to join a school as a teacher. The two sons of Padma have petitioned the Kerala and Tamil Nadu Chief Ministers seeking to release the body of their mother. Since the bodies were in a decomposed state, the Kerala police had earlier said they would be handed over to the relatives only after a DNA test.
The samples were collected from the relatives recently and the testing will be done at a government laboratory in Thiruvananthapuram. The two women were sacrificed by the accused to settle the financial issues of the couple and bring prosperity in their life, police had said.
Prime accused Shafi (52), Singh (68), a massage therapist and his wife Laila (59) are currently under police custody. "The accused conspired to conduct the human sacrifice with an intention to bring prosperity in the life of the second and third accused by pleasing the goddess in favour of Singh and his wife Laila," the remand report had said.
The chopped body parts of the deceased were exhumed from the premises of the couple's house at Elanthoor village in Pathanamthitta. The first woman went missing on September 26 and the probe led to Shafi. On further interrogating him, police found the trio had earlier murdered Roslin in a similar manner in June.