Representative image showing a police officer.
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The Karnataka police solved a 13-year-old murder case of Vishwanath Rai, a financer from Puttur, Dakshina Kannada district.
As per a recent report by The Indian Express, on June 9, 2001, Rai's wife filed a complaint with the police about her husband, who was missing from two days. According to her statement, the last time she spoke to Rai was on June 7, when he was with Vishwanath Shetty, his manager in their firm.
She mentioned that the last call made to her husband, Shetty had picked up the phone and when she urged him to hand over the call to Rai, he cut the call.
The police then found a body in Honnavar, which could be identified by the tag on his shirt, that read 'Sindhu Puttur 21376'. Later, it was confirmed by Mallika that it was her husband.
The police had found Shetty's car, but he was nowhere to be found.
According to the report, on the day of murder, Shetty and Rai had an argument over a financial matter, and on the same day Shetty bought bottles of beer and they were at Rai's residence. Along with Rai and Shetty, Subash Chandra, an employee of the firm was also present.
It was Chandra, who after taken into the custody by the police said that Shetty killed Rai. Shetty allegedly hit Rai with an iron rod. Shetty was also absconding after the murder.
The case was forgotten after a few years. However, in 2012, police inspector Suresh Kumar P started digging the case again and finally solved the mystery after so many years.
As quoted by The Indian Express, inspector Kumar said that he was suspicious with the fact that Shetty's wife and son were still living at the same place, and had not approached the police regarding missing Shetty.
Kumar, along with his team tracked his wife and son and got to know that his wife was working at the court canteen and his son was a cricket player in Puttur.
"We came to know that his son was using two mobile phones but shared only one number. In one of the cricket tournaments where Shetty’s son played, the police constable managed to get the other number. After scanning the call detail record (CDR), we found something very unusual. That number was getting calls once every two or three months. Shetty’s wife also got calls from the same number and they spoke for more than 20-30 minutes. This mobile number became the subject of our interest,” Kumar said, as reported by The Indian Express.
The number was traced to be from Tamil Nadu's Erode. Further when the police investigated, they found out that Shetty was living there with a fake identity and was known by the name 'Raj'. He had set up his own business, Raj Finance.
Finally, in August 2014, Shetty was arrested.
In December 2021, Shetty was sentenced to life imprisonment by Judge Rudolph Pereira.