A search operation has been launched to arrest a couple after a man and his wife allegedly killed a farmer in Maliya taluka of Morbi, police said Saturday. The motive of the murder is yet to be ascertained, the police said. The couple was working as sharecroppers on the farm of the victim. Officers of Maliya police station in Morbi district said that Paresh Kalariya, a 37-year-old farmer of Rohishala village, had sown cumin seeds (jeera) in a piece of land he had taken on lease from fellow villager Punja Parsottam. Paresh had engaged Rakesh and Rakesh’s wife as labourers on the field. However, Paresh was found lying unconscious under a heap of hay on the border of the farm with his body having injury marks on his head. After his family alerted police at 11.25 am on Friday, officials said, police shifted him to a hospital in Maliya where he was declared dead. An FIR registered at Maliya police station quotes Chandulal, Paresh’s 57-year-old elder brother, as alleging that the accused had dialled Paresh at around 8 pm on Thursday. He allegedly asked Paresh to go to the farm and deliver diesel so that they could irrigate the crop. Paresh rode to the farm on a bike with a can of diesel. On Friday morning, a labourer working on another farm of the Kalariyas went to Chandulal’s residence and informed that he too needed diesel but Paresh’s phone was unreachable. When Chandulal and others went to the farm, they found Paresh under the heap of harvested hay with deep cuts on his head. “The labourer, whom we used to call Rakesh, and his wife were also not seen,” the FIR quotes Chandulal as saying, adding, that the couple allegedly bludgeoned his brother to death. Based on Chandulal’s complaint, Maliya police have booked Rakesh and his wife for murder. “The couple is on the run and efforts are on to trace them,” police sub-inspector NN Gadhvi, who is in charge of Maliya police station, told The Indian Express on Saturday. "The motive of the murder is a matter of investigation," he added.
