Businessman wife found murdered in house in Kerala's Kottayam

    Kottayam (Kerala), Apr 22 (PTI) A well-known businessman and his wife were found brutally murdered in their house in Thiruvathukkal in this district on Tuesday, police said.
    Both of them were found in a pool of blood in two different rooms in the morning, and the bodies had deep cuts and wounds on their faces.
    The deceased were identified as Vijayakumar (64), who owns an auditorium and runs several other business establishments in the district, and his wife Meera (60), police said.
    The couple were found murdered in their own house.
    According to police sources, their maid, who came to the house for daily work in the morning, spotted the bodies of the couple inside the building.
    Though she used to enter the house via the back door, it was found locked this morning, and so she entered the building through the front door, they said.
    She soon alerted the neighbours about the incident, who in turn informed the police.
    Kottayam Superintendent of Police Shahul Hameed said that police confirmed the couple's death as a murder and got some indications about the accused.
    As per the indications, the motive of the murder is personal rivalry and there was no evidence of theft at the crime scene, he said.
    "The murders were carried out in a brutal manner. The bodies were found in two different rooms. An axe taken from the outhouse was used for the crime," he told reporters here.
    The officer said the murderer is suspected to have entered the house through the front door after opening the window using a screwdriver.
    A grinding stone was also found at the crime scene, suspectedly brought by the accused to break open the door, but it was not used, he said.
    Though there was a full-time security-cum caretaker in the house, he came to know about the incident only after the maid informed the neighbours about it in the morning, the officer further said.
    The hard-disk of the CCTV at the house was found missing, but search has been intensified in railway station and other suspected places for the accused based on other information, he said.
    "We have clear indication.The accused will be nabbed soon," the SP added.
    When the officer was asked about a migrant worker who had been dismissed from the service by the deceased couple recently, Hameed said he had been in jail since last September in connection with a financial fraud case and was released early this month.
    Replying to a question by the media, he said there was no information so far whether he (migrant worker) came to the house after being released from the prison.
    "No one is in our custody in connection with the case so far," the SP added.
    He also said that as of now, the local police were not suspecting any connection between the murder of the couple and their son's death, which happened in 2018.
    The businessman's son, a BTech graduate, was found dead on a railway track here with injuries over his body.
    Though local police treated the death as a suicide case, Vijayakumar had challenged this in High Court which ruled a CBI probe into the incident months ago.
    "We don't have any special doubt in the case. We have already handed over all the files related to the case to the CBI," the senior police officer said.
    The deceased couple's daughter is living abroad, local people said.

(This story has not been edited by THE WEEK and is auto-generated from PTI)