Two more held for murder of Rasikan Rajesh

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the murder of former radio jockey Rasikan Rajesh of Madavoor, arrested two more persons on Tuesday.

Appunni alias Appu, 34, of

Deshathinakam

near

Kayamkulam

and his brother-in-law Sumith, 32, a Chennai-based small-businessman, are the two arrested. While Appunni was arrested for his direct involvement in the murder, Sumith was arrested for harbouring Appunni.


SIT head

Attingal DSP

P

Anilkumar

said the two accused were taken into custody from Pettah railway station, when they alighted here on Tuesday morning from a train from

Ernakulam

. The police had reliable intelligence regarding their arrival, which made things easy for the cops.

Appunni, who has been arraigned as the second accused in the crime, is a close friend of the first accused Mohammed Salih. Following the arrest, he told the cops that Sathar, the alleged key conspirator in the crime, and Salih had offered him a good job in Qatar as a reward to carry out the hit job.

The DSP said Appunni tried some ‘tricks’ from the superhit Malayalam crime thriller Drishyam to derail the police investigation.

After committing the crime, he escaped to Tamil Nadu. He stayed in

Rameswaram

, Madurai, Pondicherry, Coimbatore and Chennai while on the run.

‘’He had been using two SIM cards, the signals of which we were tracing to track him down. At Rameswaram, he purchased a Rs 5,000-mobile phone, inserted one of the SIM cards in it and gifted it to an auto rickshaw driver he got acquainted there,’’ the DSP said. He abandoned the other phone in an interstate lorry in Madurai, the DSP said.

But Appunni could not stay for long at a particular place owing to the pressure from the investigation team. The police in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra were alerted about him. The cops, in turn, had alerted all the hotels and lodges by passing on his photograph. Thus, he was forced to return to the state, apparently to secure more money to escape farther.

The police also said that while Appunni was on the run, Sathar allegedly helped him by sending him money. The police are also examining the details of these transactions. The two accused would be produced before the court on Wednesday.