Live-in partner turns out to be woman, child’s murderer

Thiruvananthapuram: Eleven years after a woman named Divya and her daughter Gowri went missing from Ooruttambalam near Nemom, the special investigation team (SIT) probing the case has found out that Divya’s live-in partner Mahin Kannu murdered them.
According to the SIT, Kannu threw the 2.5-year-old child into the sea off Puthukadai coast at Colachel in Tamil Nadu and strangled Divya to death on August 18, 2011.He also threw her body into the sea.
Kannu’s wife Rukhiya, the second accused in the case, has been slapped with charges of criminal conspiracy and compelling him to commit the murder. The SIT team has taken both the accused into custody.
Kannu had concealed the fact that he was married and got into a relationship with Divya. When Divya delivered a baby, he moved to the Gulf and cut off all contact with her. When he returned two years later, Divya confronted him and asked him to marry her to avoid legal complications.
Kannu conceded and they started living together at Ooruttambalam in 2011. Later, their relationship turned sour when Divya came to know that he was married.
Probe team said Kannu wanted to get rid of Divya and he discussed the matter with Rukhiya. They then hatched a plan to kill her.
As per the plan, Kannu called Divya and asked her to come with him to Velankanni to lead a life together after getting married.
He came to pick them up in the morning in his autorickshaw and they wandered around various places at Kaliyikkavila and Balaramapuram throughout the day.
At 9pm, they crossed the Kerala border and reached Puthukadai at 9:20pm. By then, Gowri wanted to attend nature’s call and they were taken to the seashore by the accused. He crossed the border back to Kerala around 10.30pm after committing the murder. On August 19, 2011, the bodies of Divya and Gowri were washed ashore and Puthukadai police registered a case.
The bodies were cremated by the police after keeping the DNA samples, photos of the bodies and materials found in the bodies.
The case, which was probed by the rural crime branch for years, got a breakthrough after the Crime Branch (rural) DSP, Johnson K J, and his team took up the investigation.
Kannu initially told the probe officers that he had no relationship with Divya but after questioning over 100 people and verifying the records available, the team was able to prove his relationship with Divya.
“Our simple question was why Kannu wanted to hide his relationship with Divya. When we showed him Gowri’s birth certificate, which had his name in the father’s column, he admitted his relationship with Divya,” said Johnson.