The trail of the murder of a 30-year-old software engineer whose body was found near a lake in the Kolar district, some 70 km from Bangalore, on Monday morning, has lead to the arrest of the 24-year-old wife of the techie and two others, including the wife's father, by police from the Gounapalli station of Kolar district. The Bangalore based software engineer Keshav Reddy was allegedly drugged and murdered at his residence on Saturday night and his body was disposed in a lake near Srinivasapur in Kolar. Police narrowed down on the techie's wife Shilpa Reddy as a key suspect in the case after her cellphone was found to be active in the region where the body was dumped on the night of the murder. A suspicious phone call that the techie's wife made to her husband's brother to inquire about his whereabouts on the night of the murder has also been used as circumstantial evidence of the wife's involvement in the killing. The others arrested in the case apart from Shilpa Reddy, 24 are her father Ramachandra Reddy and a cousin Vasudev Reddy, 22. The family are residents of the Banaswadi area in East Bangalore. "The decomposed body of Keshav Reddy, a native of Kothakote in Andhra Pradesh and resident of Banaswadi was found on Monday morning at Kadirelaghatta Lake near Srinivasapur. Reddy was working as a software engineer with a private firm in Bangalore. He was identified on the basis of his company ID card and his parents and wife were informed,'' said S Vikas, a sub-inspector from Gounapalli who was involved in the investigation of the case. [related-post] According to the police, the parents of the software engineer informed them that there was a deep marital discord between Keshav Reddy and his wife Shilpa Reddy due to various reasons. The police verified the call records of the techie's wife and her father on suspicion after learning that Shilpa Reddy had on the night of the murder called a relative of her husband to check on his whereabouts - something she had never done before. The cell records showed the cell phones of Shilpa Reddy and her father to be active on Saturday night in the Srinvasapura region of Kolar around where the techie's body was eventually found on Monday morning. The police took Shilpa Reddy and her family in for questioning on Wednesday and the 24-year-old reportedly confessed to the crime. According to the police Shilpa Reddy told them that she had drugged her husband using sleeping tablets mixed with soft drinks at their house in Banaswadi on Saturday evening. While her husband was unconscious the wife allegedly hit him on his head with a blunt object and murdered him. Later, she took the body with the assistance of her parents and a cousin to Srinivasapur and dumped it at the lake and returned to Bangalore. Police said the cell records of Shilpa, her father and her cousin revealed they were in the Srinivasapura area in the early hours of Sunday. The arrested persons were produced before a Srinivasapur court and have been remanded to three days in police custody. “We have to seize the murder weapon and find out the exact motive behind the murder,” a police officer said.
