Murder for ₹2,000: Kasaragod whodunnit ends with arrest of daily wage labourer in Karnataka

Kasaragod: It began as a whodunnit- an unidentified half-naked body in a lift pit in a building under construction, a crumpled Aadhaar card, and no clear suspect or motive. It has now ended with the arrest of a co-worker, in a killing that police say was triggered by a ₹2,000 loan. 

Kasaragod town police on Tuesday, April 28, arrested H Manjunath alias Manjappa (45), a native of Kundgol in Karnataka's Dharwad district, for the murder of Chandrashekhar Suresh Pattad (38), a daily wage labourer from Baleshwar village in Karnataka’s Gadag district. “It took some old policing methods and weeks of surveillance in Karnataka before we could arrest Manjappa. He was not using any phone, and so it was a slow process,” said Kasaragod Town Station House Office - Inspector N Nalinakshan. 

Chandrashekhar was found dead around 10.15 pm on March 10 inside a building under construction at Nullipady in Kasaragod town. His body had been dumped into a pit dug for installing a lift. The police could identify him only on the second day. 

There were blood stains across the building and signs of a struggle. The post-mortem later confirmed that a deep head injury had caused his death. 

Police said both men lived on the margins- daily-wage workers who queued up each morning in Kasaragod town, hoping to be picked for work. They had earlier rented a room near the traffic police station, but moved into the building under construction to save money, said the inspector. “They came there only to sleep,” he said. 

On the night of the murder, the two had been drinking. According to the investigating officer, this is the version given by Manjappa: he had lent Chandrashekhar ₹2,000. “That night, Manjappa said he asked for the money back, and Chandrashekhar responded with a tirade of profanity,” said Inspector Nalinakshan. 

The quarrel escalated. Manjappa picked up a wooden plank and struck Chandrashekhar on the head, a blow that proved fatal. He then dragged the body and dumped it into the lift pit, hoping to delay discovery. 

But the building owner walked in that same night and found the body. 

The only concrete clue at the scene was an Aadhaar card. It belonged to Manjunath K N (45), another daily wage worker from Karnataka. Police tracked him down, only to learn he had used the same building as a night shelter months earlier. 

The breakthrough came from the owner’s recollection of a man he had seen at the site. “We ran the description among migrant workers, and they identified him as Manjappa from Dharwad,” said Inspector Nalinakshan. “We then placed officers at locations he was likely to visit, rotating teams every week. Last week, we got a tip-off that he had been spotted.” 

Officers had been waiting at the location for a week before he finally turned up.