Two days on, cops yet to trace prime suspect in Puttur murder case

Puttur, June 16: Although two days have passed since four members of a family were allegedly murdered at their residence at Kakkur of Bettampady village in Puttur taluk, police are yet to trace Venkataramana Bhat , who is the prime suspect in the case.

The police have initiated a search operation to trace the whereabouts of Venkatramana Bhat, who is suspected to have gone missing after the incident.

Three teams have been constituted to search for the accused.

The deceased are Sandhya V Bhat (45), a teacher by profession, her three children named Vedya (18), Harigovind Sharma (15) and Vinutha (12).

A team of police will comprise of District Crime Investigation Bureau, another will be headed by Puttur ASP and third team will be headed by Rural Circle Inspector. These teams will search for the accused at various places including Kerala, Maharastra, Bangalore etc.

The accused has switched off his mobile but the police have found that the accused had thrown his mobile in Kakkur area before leaving the village.

Though there were rumours that Bhat was spotted at Mangalore airport on Friday afternoon, it was later learnt to be false information.

Vimala, the lady who used to assist Bhat in feeding information to the computer was interrogated by the police on Friday and during the interrogation, Vimala is said to have denied to have any sort of relationship with Bhat. The police released Vimala on Friday evening on conditions of summoning her anytime they would find the need to interrogate her again in future.

Bhat had taken up research on gravitation force. Following this interest, he had even called a press meet sometime ago claiming that he has designed a machine, which can produce one watt energy per day using gravitational force.

“The unit costs Rs 80,000 and I have accomplished something that no scientist has achieved so far. My invention will solve power crisis permanently,” Bhat had claimed in the press meet.

People who know him closely say that he was a difficult person with bizarre interests and behaviour. Many suspect that this bizarreness of his must have compelled him to make his family to death.

Bhat, who was also an astrologer, shared strained relation with almost every person in the village.

His father Kundaya Bhat had large landholding but had lost most of it to the occupants and cultivators of land in wake of land reforms.