Seven get life term for kidnap, murder of Udupi doctor

Team Udayavani, Sep 4, 2018, 4:48 PM IST

Udupi/Bengaluru: The 63rd additional city civil and sessions court has convicted seven persons accused of murdering a Udupi native, Dr Sharath Kumar after kidnapping him for ransom in the year 2010.

Holding the convicts – Ravi Kumar (36), a Sanjaynagar resident; Aswathgowda (33) of Geddalahalli; Shivaprathap (33) of Nandini Layout; Chetan Kumar (28) of Sanjaynagar; Kumar (38) resident of Kavika Road; Bhushit (28) of Vasanthnagar and Sandhya alias Sanjana (32) of KEB Layout in Sanjaynagar – guilty under  sections 120B, 364A and 302 of IPC, the court awarded life imprisonment to them 

Case history:

The victim, Dr Sharath Kumar, was running a clinic on Sanjaynagar Main Road in Bengaluru and was earning a good rental income from the seven buildings owned by him. The convicted Ravi Kumar, a gym instructor, along with his girlfriend Sanjana and four others had masterminded the abduction of Dr Sharat in the hope of getting a huge ransom for his release. 

On April 9, 2010 Ravi called the doctor to visit his house to attend to his ailing mother. Once here, they held him captive and demanded a Rs 25 lakh ransom for his release. 

However, when Dr Sharath informed them that he would find it difficult to arrange this amount in cash, the gang asked him to call a jeweller friend of his and asked him to deliver 836 grammes of gold in two consignments – one at Dr Sharath’s house and another at a medical shop. While the accused could have collected the gold from the jeweller itself, they were scared that they could be captured on the shop’s CCTV camera.

Fearing that they may land in trouble if Dr Sharat were to be released the gang decided to murder him. Accordingly, Dr Sharath was taken in Kumar’s cab to Kunigal and later to Amruthur where he was strangled and his body dumped nearby.

A complaint was filed by the doctors’ wife as he failed to return on the next day despite thm fulfilling the kidnapper’s demands. 

A special team, formed to crack the case was able to locate the doctors’ body on the basis of the cellphone records. Similarly, the police traced one of the culprits on the basis of phone location.  Ravi came under their suspect scanner since he didn’t show up for work at the gym. All the accused in the case were nabbed by the cops within a few days after the murder.

Around 660 grammes of the gold given as ransom was recovered from the accused apart from Rs 1.3 lakh in cash and the vehicles – Qualis and Maruti Van – used in the crime.