Trichy: Three get life term in 11-year-old murder case

TRICHY: A Trichy court on Wednesday convicted three people to life imprisonment for murdering a man after a dispute over monetary transactions done 11 years ago at Sangiliyandapuram here. The additional district court III awarded life imprisonment to Feroz Ahamed, 46, Pandikumar, 49, and Francis Prabhu, 49, and imposed a fine of Rs 1,000 each on them for murdering M Shahul Hameed, 40, of Dhanarathinam Nagar near Gandhi market.
The court also sentenced them to three more years of imprisonment and imposed a fine of Rs 500 on each of them for causing disappearance of evidence. Prime accused Umar Farooq, 46, the brother-in-law of Shahul Hameed, died during the trial. Shahul Hameed who returned from a job in a foreign country had gone missing from home on March 1, 2009. Based on a complaint from his wife Jawahar Nisha, Gandhi market police registered a case two days later. Since there was no progress in the investigations, Jawahar Nisha filed a habeas corpus petition in Madras high court and also pleaded to transfer the case to CBCID in 2011.
The investigation assumed a new dimension after the court transferred the case to CBCID with the officers confirming that he was murdered. His body was exhumed from a cemetery in the city, but police were left with no evidence to trace the accused. However, CBCID police soon managed to solve the puzzle and arrest the accused. The inquiry brought to light that Shahul Hameed used to send money to Jawahar Nisha when he was abroad.
On his return, when he asked for the money his wife told him that her family members had spent it. Subsequently, Shahul Hameed met Umar Farooq at his house and asked him to return his money. In a fit of rage, Umar Farooq strangulated Shahul to death with a belt. His friends Feroz, Pandikumar and Francis helped him to dispose the body in a cemetery by pouring sulphur on the body to erase evidence.