The Visakhapatnam police on Thursday arrested five people in connection with the murder of an RTI activist, M Sreenivas alias ‘Noodles Sreenu’, earlier this week. Sreenivas was brutally murdered after an attack by two assailants on a bike. Carrying iron roads, the accused waylaid the 44-year-old near Dwarakanagar in Chodavaram mandal on Tuesday night and thrashed him, leaving him dead on the spot.
Police, who cracked the case, said that a business rivalry had led to Sreenivas' murder. The main accused was identified as 40-year-old Nageswara Rao, while two of the accused; Apparao and Pawan Kumar, were auto drivers from Chodavaram. The two remaining accused were identified as K Gopalakrishna and K Manikanta, both in their twenties.
The police said that the deceased, who did several odd jobs for a living from selling noodles to running a photocopying shop, was allegedly harassing Nageswara.
“Vexed with it, Nageswara Rao hatched a plan to eliminate Mr. Sreenu and hired four youngsters for it. The deal was struck at Rs 2 lakh. Nageswara Rao allegedly paid Rs 35,000 in advance and promised to pay the rest after the job was done. It was a case of contract killing in connection with business rivalry,” Circle Inspector Srinivasa Rao was quoted as saying.
After the murder, the police said that they looked at CCTV footage in the area and also questioned several people close to the deceased, to ascertain who could have had a motive to kill Sreenivas. It was then, that they took Nageswara into custody. The police said that Nageswara confessed to the crime upon being questioned and also helped them identify and arrest all the other accused, thereby allowing them to crack the case within two days.
Police said that they had registered a case under Sections 302 (Murder), 120b (Criminal conspiracy), 201 (Causing disappearance of evidence of offence, or giving false information to screen offender) read with 34 (Acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention) of the IPC.
The accused were presented in front of a local court and sent to judicial remand