19-year-old Aneesh George’s parents were shocked when the police turned up at their house on December 29, Wednesday morning. The police team informed them that their son had met with an accident. It was only a little later that they were told that Aneesh had been murdered, by a man named Lalan Simon, who lived just half a kilometre away from their residence in Kerala's Pettah. Police say Aneesh was in a relationship with Simon’s daughter and had reportedly snuck into his girlfriend’s house, and Simon found him there.
Simon surrendered himself to the Pettah police after the tragedy occured late on December 28. He had, at first, told the police that he heard a loud noise from his daughter’s bedroom late at night, and mistaking Aneesh for a thief, killed him. However, police told TNM that as per a preliminary investigation, they suspect the crime was motivated by a personal grudge.
According to reports, Aneesh, a BCom student at Bethany College, and Simon’s daughter were in the church choir, and Simon did not approve of their relationship. Aneesh lived only about half a kilometre from Simon’s house. The news of his death came as a shock to his parents, as they did not know he snuck out in the middle of the night on December 28. They became aware of the news only after the police said that Aneesh had been killed at Simon’s house.
Police officials told TNM that Simon’s house, where the crime occured, has been sealed off for further investigation. The family has been shifted to another location while the police probe the incident.
In a separate incident, on December 28, two teenage girls surrendered at the Ambalavayal police station, after they confessed to killing their 70-year-old paternal uncle and chopping his body into several pieces. They told the police that they killed the man, Muhammed, for attempting to rape their mother. However, Muhammed’s wife, the girls’ aunt, refuted the allegations of sexual assault and alleged that it was Muhammad’s brother, the girls’ father, who killed him. Read more about the incident here: Two teenage girls tell Kerala police they killed uncle for assaulting their mother