Title - DNA exclusive: How a mere ticket helped crack double murder mystery

A simple railway ticket with a handwritten mobile phone number on its flipside found at the scene of the crime, and a little bit of luck, helped Cottonpet police crack the mystery surrounding the Maheshwari double murder which took place in the wee hours of August 1.Cottonpet police had arrested two - PK Tammaiah alias Kiran and Ramesha alias Ravi. Although the prime accused, Karthik, remains absconding, the police are trying to find out what his actual name is and his whereabouts.The couple, Pavan Kumar and Babita Maheshwari, who owned and managed Sri Mahalakshmi Hotel on Cottonpet main road, were found murdered inside the hotel premises which also doubled as their residence. Their five-and-a-half-year-old daughter was also found unconscious with head injuries, but survived the attack.The Cottonpet police, while investigating the case just a few hours after the couple’s bodies were discovered found several receipts with handwritten mobile phone numbers on their flipsides. While it would have been a Herculean task to go through each and every number to lead them to possible killers, an alert sleuth who was part of the investigations noticed an unreserved railway ticket for from Nanjanagud to Mysore dated July 15 lying besides a dustbin. It indicated that someone had hurriedly tried to throw it in the dustbin, but had missed its mark and fallen beside it.An investigator told DNA that it was sheer luck that the ticket (on which Kiran and Ravi had travelled) could be spotted as it carried a mobile number behind it with the names of Kiran and Ravi.Hoping for a breakthrough in the case, the investigators traced the number which turned out to be in the name of a jawan hailing from Bihar who had visited Bangalore.After preliminary investigations had revealed that it was a gang of homosexuals who were also involved in flesh trade who were involved in the murder, the police decided to lay a trap by employing a mimic artiste to call on the said number in a female’s voice.The voice that responded was that of Kiran. The artiste in a female’s voice convinced Kiran that ‘she’ had come from Mumbai and was given his number to contact. ‘She’ told Kiran that ‘she’ was waiting outside the railway station near a big building. When Kiran went to meet ‘her’, the Cottonpet police nabbed him.Kiran spilled the beans about his accomplice Ravi, who was nabbed the next morning in Majestic. The two, on interrogation, revealed that the brain behind the murders was a person named Karthik.They also revealed that the jawan’s mobile phone came into their possession as he did not have enough money to pay them for their sexual favours after Kiran had solicited him in a lavatory of an empty train compartment at City Railway Station. The soldier had instead parted with his mobile phone along with the SIM card. However, the mystery that remains to be solved is about the real identity of Karthik.