Bengaluru: Two more bodies were recovered near the Yercaud forest area in Salem district, Tamil Nadu, on Saturday, as Bengaluru police worked through the locations where the Rajajinagar murders are alleged to have been carried out.
Senior officers said the bodies are believed to be those of Sunita, 40, wife of prime accused Indushekhar, 52, and Roopavathi, 65, his mother-in-law. Both were found in a decomposed state, so formal identification is still pending. They are understood to be the first two victims.
Indushekhar was arrested on Friday. He is accused of killing his wife and six members of her family, including a seven-year-old boy, and disposing of the bodies over 18 days. An 11-year-old relative was rescued. Only the seven-year-old's body had been found until Friday.
According to sources, Sunita was killed on October 16 and Roopavathi the next day. It is not yet established whether the bodies were disposed of on the same days, as the accused has claimed, or separately — which is why investigators are running a reverse recce of the route.
Three bodies have been recovered so far, and the search for the remaining four continues. Officers expect the operation to take another two to three days, since the bodies were left at multiple locations.
B. Nemagoud, Deputy Commissioner of Police (North), has been appointed investigating officer. Six teams are working on different threads, with Joint Commissioner of Police (West) C. Vamsi Krishna overseeing. Police have secured 12 days of the accused's custody, largely because his physical presence is needed to mark the exact spots.
The next phase covers Chamundi Hills and Shiradi Ghat. Officers said recovering the bodies quickly matters, because further decomposition limits what a postmortem can establish.
One question remains open: how the bodies were brought down from the second floor of a building near Bhashyam Circle. The staircase is under two feet wide, and investigators suspect ropes were used, possibly with help from the accused's 17-year-old daughter, who is also an accused.