Berhampur: A 54-year-old woman, Rajalaxmi Kar, was allegedly murdered by her adopted teenage daughter with the help of her lover and his friend at their rented house at Telisundhi Sahi at Paralakhemundi in Odisha’s Gajapati district.
The accused, identified as Ganesh Rath alias Chiku (21) and Dinesh Sahoo (20), have been arrested along with the 13-year-old girl.
According to police, Rajalaxmi had adopted the girl after rescuing her as an abandoned infant in Bhubaneswar. She was just three days old then. After the girl enrolled at Kendriya Vidyalaya in Paralakhemundi, they moved there and lived in a rented house.
Recently, the girl developed a relationship with Rath and Sahoo, which Rajalaxmi disapproved of and instead asked her to concentrate on her studies. Rath allegedly manipulated and convinced the girl to kill her mother to seize her assets and sustain their relationship. On April 29 evening, the girl reportedly gave Rajalaxmi sleeping pills. Once unconscious, she called her accomplices, who then smothered her to death with pillows. They then took her to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
The Class VIII girl told her neighbours that her mother, who had a history of heart disease, died of a sudden cardiac arrest, and cremated her the following day in Bhubaneswar, where some of her relatives resided.
The plot unraveled when Rajalaxmi’s uncle discovered her hidden mobile phone in Bhubaneswar and found revealing Instagram Messenger conversations between the two co-accused on the premeditated murder and their plan to loot over 70 grams of gold ornaments and Rs 60,000 in cash. Following this, Siba Prasad Mishra, Rajalaxmi’s brother, lodged a complaint at Paralakhemundi police station on May 6.
Prior to the murder, the girl had also handed over some of Rajalaxmi’s gold ornaments to Rath, who pawned them for approximately Rs 2.4 lakh at a private finance company. He allegedly used the money to purchase a motorcycle and travel across the state, police investigation revealed.
Three mobile phones with incriminating Instagram chats, two pillows used in the crime, and about 30 grams of the stolen gold ornaments were also seized, police added.
