Bangalore Police arrest 4 for Karnataka official Mahantesh's murder

Bangalore: Four people were arrested on Thursday in connection with the murder case of Karnataka Administrative Service (KAS) officer SP Mahantesh. He was a whistleblower in a cooperative housing scam case and was allegedly murdered after he began exposing the scam.

The four people arrested by Bangalore Police are -- Murli, Aiyappa, Shivakumar and Kiran Kumar. The police have also seized a car which was used in the murder. The police said 23-year-old Kumar plotted the brutal murder of Mahantesh because he was scared of being caught after having siphoned off funds from the cooperative society, where he worked as a cashier. The KAS officer was auditing the cooperative society's books. The other three people arrested in the case are Kumar's friends, said the police.

"They first attacked him (Mahantesh) with their fists and then took a wicket and hit him on his head, that was the fatal blow," said Bangalore Police Commissioner Jyotiprakash Mirji.

The cashier of the cooperative housing, whose books SP Mahantesh was auditing, allegedly plotted the murder.

The arrest has provided some relief to Mahantesh's family but they aren't ready to give up till the "big people" involved in the murder are arrested. "We're satisfied but we want the original culprits, the big people involved in this to come out," said Mahantesh's sister SP Shylaja.

The police, too, are planning to delve deeper into the cooperative's activities. "Whether there were any seniors in the society, didn't they know about the misappropriation and the assault? We are investigating all of this," said Mirji. But with the fifth accused still on the run, the case is far from reaching closure.

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