GADAG/HUBBALLI:
Police
Monday claimed to have cracked the
murder
of four persons with the arrest of eight persons, including
Vinayak
Bakale, who had allegedly given a supari for Rs 65 lakh to kill his parents and stepbrother over a property dispute. But the plan went awry with the killers instead murdering three guests who they mistook for the Bakale
family members
.
Kartik Bakale, son of Gadag-Betgeri City Municipal Council vice-president Sunanda
Bakale
and Prakash Bakale, and three members of the Hadimani family visiting the Bakales were hacked to death around 2.30am Friday after assailants gained entry by breaking open the first-floor windows of the room in which the Hadimanis were sleeping.
Northern (Range)
IGP Vikash
Kumar said Vinayak, 31, Prakash's elder son from the first marriage, had allegedly given contract to a crime syndicate spread across Karnataka and Maharashtra over a property fight. Sunanda is the second wife of Prakash Bakale and Kartik was their son.
Vinayak assumed police would suspect his brother
The original plot, according to police, was to eliminate Prakash, Sunanda and Kartik in their house in
Gadag
. But the
contract killers
ended up murdering Bakales' three guests -- Parashuram Hadimani, wife Laxmibai and daughter Akanksha. Kartik, who rushed up the stairs on hearing screams in the dead of the night, was also killed in the melee.
Police sources said that Prakash had registered a few assets in Vinayak's name. When Vinayak recently tried to sell them, Prakash opposed it. Vinayak lived with the Bakales. The needle of suspicion was on Dattatreya Bakale, another son from Prakash's first wife, as his ties with the family had soured over his alleged fraudulent deals with banks and jewellery houses.
Taking advantage of his brother's soured ties with the family, Vinayak plotted the murders, assuming cops will "naturally suspect" Dattatreya for the killings.
IGP Vikash said the other accused
arrested
are Fairoz Nisarahmed Khazi, 29, a car dealer; Zishan Mehboobali Khazi, 24, a businessman; Sahil Ashpak Khazi, 19, who cleans cars; Sohail Ashpaq Khazi, 19, a worker; Sultan jilani Shaikh, 23, a construction worker; Mahesh Jagannath Salunke, 21, a worker; Wahid Liyaqat Bepari, 21, a construction worker; all from Maharashtra. DG&IGP Alok Mohan has announced a Rs 5-lakh reward to the probe team led by Gadag SP BS Nemagouda for nabbing the accused in a 72-hour operation.
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