Bengaluru: Toilet cleaner who hammered 70-year-old to death gets life

BENGALURU: A city court on Tuesday held a 37-year-old toilet cleaner guilty of bludgeoning a 70-year-old man to death, seriously injuring his wife and robbing them of gold chains in December 2014. He was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Y Ramanjaneyulu alias Krishna, resident of Veerabhadreshwaranagar in Girinagar and from Andhra Pradesh, had attacked PN Raghavendra Rao, a resident of Ittamadu in Banashankari III Stage, and his wife R Sudhakumari Rao, 65, with a hammer on the afternoon of December 17, 2014.
Ramanjaneyulu used to clean bathrooms and toilets in Rao's house once a week. Rao's sons, both software engineers, live separately. According to police, Ramanjaneyulu was an alcoholic and had abandoned his wife. He targeted the elderly couple for gain, they added.
Public prosecutor Vanishree said additional sessions judge A Eeranna held Ramanjaneyulu guilty under IPC sections 302 (murder), 397 (robbery, or dacoity, with attempt to cause death or grievous hurt), 307 (attempt to murder) and 449 (house tresspass). In his order, Eeranna said Ramanjaneyulu should serve rigorous imprisonment for seven years.
Ramanjaneyulu threw chilli powder on the couple and hit them with the hammer he had purchased in a hardware shop earlier that morning. Rao died instantly, while Sudhakumari sustained head injuries. She later told cops that Ramanjaneyulu had attacked them and fled with two gold chains.
Ramanjaneyulu's mobile was switched off on the day of the incident itself. Inspector BK Shekhar from Channamanakere Achhukattu police station visited his residence the same evening, only to find the door locked. A special team was formed. Shekhar and sub-inspectors Kumaraswamy and Nagaraj took up the technical investigation, while assistant sub-inspector Kambaiah, head constables Jai Ram Reddy, Dollaiah and Siddegowda began visiting Ramanjaneyulu's family and friends.
Meanwhile, cops discovered that Ramanjaneyulu's brother-in-law Lakshman Kumar lived in Bellur Cross near Kunigal and often visited him. When cops reached Bellur Cross, Kumar, a daily-wage worker, told them Ramanjaneyulu had visited him and left some time earlier. He had no idea of the gruesome crime his relative had committed.
"Those days, CCTV cameras weren't much in use. Our team visited different places in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana and spoke to his family and friends. Most of them said Ramanjaneyulu would be in touch with his brother-in-law regularly," said Shekhar, now a deputy superintendent of police with CID.
In the second week of January 2015, police noticed that Kumar would receive a call on his mobile from a telephone booth in Adilabad railway station (Telangana) once in three days. "A team of three cops went to the station and identified the booth. They started observing it round the clock. On the afternoon of January 22, 2015, Ramanjaneyulu came to the booth and called his brother-in-law. Having seen his photo, cops detained him and brought him to the city the same night," a senior police officer said.
Sudhakumari identified Ramanjaneyulu as the assailant before police, but died during the trial. In the chargesheet, cops added the statements of shopowners who had sold the hammer and chilli powder to Ramanjaneyulu. Reports from Forensic Science laboratory confirmed the chilli powder found on the dead body and samples sent from the packet Ramanjaneyulu had thrown outside the house were a match. A total of 47 witnesses deposed before the court. Ramanjaneyulu is in judicial custody since January 2015 as courts rejected his bail petitions.