Avadi double murder: Suspects nabbed in Haridwar

The seven-member special team went at least seven times to his hometown near Visakhapatnam and Uttarakhand to secure the accused – Podilappu Suresh Kumar and Bhulakshmi – said Deputy Commissioner (Ambattur) I Eswaran. However, police could recover only 1.5 sovereigns and some cash as they spent the rest.

The official said Visakhapatnam police helped the team, as Suresh has 20 cases of murder, robbery and rape pending against him across Andhra Pradesh.

Suresh and Bhulakshmi escaped to Uttarakhand with their one-year-old child and travelled to the pilgrimage sites in the State. But they were in contact with a person in their hometown. With his inputs, police traced the hideout and arrested the couple. Suresh was working as an autorickshaw driver in Haridwar, said police.

Preliminary inquiries revealed that Suresh was tempted to commit the crime as there were hardly any visitors to the house of the deceased – S Jegadeesan (67) and Vilasini (58) – on Sekkadu link road near Avadi. “As the couple was carrying out some construction work in the premises, Suresh was under the impression that they had large sum of cash and decided to loot them. However, the couple had only Rs 20,000, so things did not go as Suresh planned,” said police.

Jegadeesan and his second wife Vilasini were found dead in a pool of blood in their house on November 27 last year. Suresh and his wife, who had joined as domestic help a month before that, were missing since then. Though police retrieved CCTV footage of the couple boarding a train from the Chennai Central, there was no trace of the couple since then.

The accused’s child has been handed over to a government home and thereafter given to Suresh’s parents, said police.