Software engineer murder: Murderers were fourth time successful: Investigator

KA Nanaiah was the inspector at the Vivekanagar police station when BV Girish, an employee of Intel, was murdered on December 3, 2003, just four days after his engagement. Girish, who had gone out with his fiancée Shubha Shankar for dinner, was assaulted with a rod near the Intermediate Ring Road in Koramangala. Nanaiah registered the case and investigated it. His inquiry led to the arrest of four people, including Shubha and her boyfriend Arun Verma, in January 2004, for the murder. On Wednesday, a fast-track court sentenced the four to life imprisonment. Nanaiah, now a deputy superintendent of police in the criminal investigation department, tells Santhosh Kumar how he cracked the case.

What happened on December 3, 2003?
We received a message that a person, later identified as BV Girish, had been admitted in Manipal Hospital after he was allegedly beaten with a rod by an unidentified man. He died in the hospital the next morning. Shubha told us that a person had attacked Girish and had run away. She said she suspected the man to be a robber.

Did your initial investigations assume it was a case of robbery?
Yes. Everyone in the police force, including my senior officers, suspected that the murder was committed by a robber because the intermediate ring road was then the hotspot for robbers. For a few days, we looked at the case from the robbery angle.

Was Shubha a suspect from the initial stages itself?
We suspected her from day one because her behaviour at the hospital and also at the crime scene when we took her there made us feel that she was trying to hide something from us. We kept a watch on her and started collecting information about her. We also came to know that she had got engaged to Girish just a few days before the incident. This also made us suspect her.

How did you establish her involvement?
When we studied the video recording of her engagement ceremony, we found that she was not happy. But we noticed a change in her behaviour when she was introducing Arun Verma, her junior in BMS College of Law, to Girish. We then went to the college and questioned some students. We came to know that she and Arun were in love.

Later, we collected details of her mobile calls and SMSes and found that she had been in touch with Arun before and after the murder. They confessed to the crime when we interrogated them with the details we had. They also revealed that Arun’s cousin Dinesh Verma and a local goon Venkatesh were also involved in the crime.

Did Shubha’s family force her to get engaged to Girish?
We were not able to ascertain that. But we found that the two families had stayed in the same area and were known to each other for 15 years. Girish’s family was not aware of Shubha’s affair with Arun. Some people told us, off the record, that Shubha’s family fixed her marriage with Girish when they came to know of the affair.

What was revealed during the preliminary investigation?
We arrested the four accused in January 2004. Investigations revealed that they had thrice attempted to kill Girish before his engagement. Shubha had asked Girish when he usually left office. Girish innocently told her the time. She gave this information to Arun. Arun, along with Dinesh and Venkatesh, had then followed Girish three times, but they could not get him alone.

Was it a well-planned murder?
Yes. Investigations revealed that it was a well-planned murder. Shubha kept Arun updated about developments at her home for her engagement with Girish. The two then sought the help of Dinesh and Venkatesh to eliminate Girish. One day, they sat on their college premises and discussed how to
eliminate him.

When attempts to kill Girish while he was on his way home from office failed, Arun asked Shubha to take him out late at night. On the night of December 3, 2003, Shubha called Girish out for dinner. That is when he was killed.