Kasaragod: The elderly woman found dead inside her house in Kumbadaje panchayat was murdered, with the autopsy confirming death by strangulation, Badiadka police said.
Pushpalatha V Shetty (72), who lived alone, was found dead in her house at Ajila in Movvar village on Thursday, January 15. The post-mortem examination conducted at the Government Medical College Hospital, Kannur, confirmed on Friday that she died of asphyxiation caused by manual strangulation.
Pushpalatha’s husband, Venkappa Shetty, predeceased her, and she had been living alone in a secluded, tarpaulin-covered, tiled-roof house at Ajila. Her relatives kept a tab on her through regular phone calls. The complaint regarding her death was filed by her niece, Vamsha (25), who lives in Bengaluru.
Her body was found lying on the dung-plastered kitchen floor when officers arrived at the scene. Police said they suspected foul play during the preliminary inspection itself, after noticing strangulation marks on her neck and scratch injuries on her face. Her mangalsutra was reportedly missing, and the initial assessment was of a violent robbery attempt. However, police later found gold bangles and cash in a cupboard, and the house had not been ransacked, either. This, officers said, has widened the scope of the investigation, with robbery as well as personal motives being examined.
A sniffer dog pressed into service tracked a scent up to the road before losing the trail, police said.
The investigation is being led by Badiadka Station House Officer Inspector A Santhosh Kumar, with questioning focused on neighbours and people known to the victim. To reconstruct the sequence of events, the forensic surgeon who conducted the post-mortem is visiting the house to correlate the injuries with the scene and gather further scientific evidence.
Kasaragod police also recalled the murder of Devaki (65) at Panayal in Pallikkara grama panchayat on January 13, 2017 -- the only unsolved murder case in Kasaragod in recent years. Investigators then described it as a “nadan” murder -- a crime with no digital footprint -- which they cited as the reason for the lack of a breakthrough.