Pregnant woman murdered for gains by alcoholic

MANGALURU: An inebriated person desperate for money killed a pregnant woman for gains at Gopady Village of Kundapur Taluk in Udupi District on Saturday.
The deceased is Indira, 31. The accused Prashant Mogaveera, about 32, from Malpe has been arrested by the police.
According to police, Prashant, a habitual offender indulging in petty thefts, was released from jail on March 17 after he was caught by Malpe police in a theft case.After the release, he had gone to his house in an inebriated state and created a ruckus for money. His father put him put the house and Prashanth had gone to Gopady to his kin’s place. There also, he had created a situation for money and his brother had planned to lodge a police complaint against him.
On Saturday, at about 4.30pm, the accused had gone to Indira’s house, about 300 mts away from his kin’s house, to ask for water with a small bottle. He was heavily drunk at that time. When Indira gave him water, he asked her to get a bigger bottle and Indira went near the firewood shed to search for the bottle. Just then, he saw the woman wearing gold jewellery and thought of robbing her. When he tried to snatch the chain, the woman fell down and seeing her, Prashant tried to rape her. Just then, he heard somebody coming and to stop the woman screaming, he used a stone lying nearby to smash her head. He fled from the spot with blood stained clothes, leaving behind the gold chain at the scene of the crime. The woman’s husband Anand had gone on a multi-day fishing boat.
The locals who saw Prashant running desperately with blood stained clothes on the beach nearby alerted the police and he was caught only to know about this murder a little later.
Police said the accused did not have time to rape the woman by looking at the crime scene, but were awaiting post mortem report from the hospital to confirm this. The deceased woman has a child Anvith, 4. This is the second tragedy in that house with Anand’s brother Manjunath drowning at sea just a month back.